


Between the Dog and the Wolf

by AmZ (Boanerges)



Series: You Know Nothing Of Javert [1]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, BAMF Javert, BAMF Jean Valjean, But honestly not that sorry, Competent Javert, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Javert/Jean Valjean, I'm Sorry Victor Hugo, M/M, No Sex, Sassy Javert, casefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-24 20:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 63
Words: 81,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3783901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boanerges/pseuds/AmZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month after the barricades fall, Valjean finds himself in the middle of a mystery and discovers just little he knows about his erstwhile pursuer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This 'feuilleton' isn't quite AU, but the events of the Brick are not central to the plot. 
> 
> Author's notes:
> 
> 1) Warning: there is no sex in this fic. UST, yes. Flickers of desire, yes. Romantic love between men couched in period-appropriate terms, certainly and plenty. Hints and insinuations - a wagonload. But no sex.
> 
> 2) Javert's songs in the first chapter are not mine: I adapted two so-called "blatnye" or criminal songs popular in Russia in the 1950s and 60s. The performer I had in mind for Javert's voice is Vladimir Vysotsky, the author of the first song. The second one is definitely convict folklore.
> 
> First song, "The City Has Plugged Up Its Ears": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHPQt9_OZAc
> 
> Second song, "Such is The Fate of a Thief": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vFc9L1jzzg

Would you know the dog from the wolf? You may look at his paw,  
Comparing the claw and the pad; you may measure his stride,  
You may handle his coat and his ears; you may study his jaw;  
And yet what you seek is not found in his bones or his hide,  
For between the Dog and the Wolf there is only the Law.  
\- Poul Anderson

**Chapter 1**

"As for me, I still have many visits to make,  
So draw your curtains, so check your latches!"

Only sheer willpower kept Valjean from spilling wine into his lap.

"You may think you are safe with your doorman and dog  
You may think leaving lights on will keep you;  
But I've already taken a print of your lock..."

Someone was singing behind a wooden support beam about three tables away.

Thick plumes of tobacco smoke and turned down lanterns veiled much of the goings-on around him, but Valjean found that if he skewed his eyes enough to the right, he could observe two men sitting under the fly-dotted portrait of Jean de La Fontaine near the bar; or rather, he could observe the back of one man and the profile of the other. The one who sat with his back to Valjean was bent over a plate and had two wine-bottles standing in front of him. The other one sat on the high, narrow steps leading to a locked door, probably the entrance to the provisions cellar, and sang in a low but playful voice, punctuating some sentences with aggressive guitar chords.

The deep, guttural timbre of the singer's voice was unmistakable. Valjean felt that he was going mad. The desire to turn around was overwhelming, but Valjean called to power all of his self-control and remained as he was. In his head, a piece of nonsense rolled around like a pebble in a clay jug: one person more, one person less, one person more, one person less.

The person was Javert. And he was singing a thief song.

Valjean's mind flashed back to the necrology published in the _Moniteur_. Body found under a boat. Irreproachable public servant. A writing left behind at the station on Place du Chatelet. A fit of mental aberration and suicide. So how was this irreproachable suicide singing thief lore in a _tapis-franc_ near the Fontainebleau barrier?

Javert's voice barely carried over the near-deafening clamor and chatter; Valjean had to strain to hear the words. Every so often, a mug would get slammed against the table somewhere to the side, showering a company with beer, or roars of savage laughter would tear out of several tobacco-scraped gullets at once and cover for a few moments all other sounds. Waitresses bustled between tables, constantly blocking the singer and his companion from Valjean's furtive observation.

The song was ended with two forceful chords, which apparently won the attention of Javert's pie-eyed neighbor, whose unsteady hand reached toward Javert with a glass. Javert accepted with a smile and took a small polite sip. His companion must've said something to him, because Javert looked up at him and nodded into the glass. Setting the unfinished wine onto the low table, he lowered his head to re-tune the guitar. The process took a surprisingly long time: the strings must've been of poor quality. Then Javert tossed his head, shaking a loose strand of hair out of his eyes, and set to singing another well-known thief tune, this time a sad one:

"Woe, the fate and fortune of a thief!  
One wants a field but finds a wall instead;  
Yet be my days of freedom e'er so brief,  
I shall hang before I hang my head."

Valjean had heard the song before. When a new man was rotated into a chain gang in Toulon, and the group felt reluctant to accept him, they would wait to voice their concerns until he sang something. One can tell a lot about a man by the songs he sings under duress. This was one of the songs almost guaranteed to win respect from the old-timers, provided it was sung with the appropriate intonations and accents. Javert sang it perfectly. There was even a hint of slightly hysterical sarcasm behind the lines, which only served to enhance the illusion that the singer was, as the thieves said, fresh from the "hospital" and recovering from a long "illness."

"It is coming soon, my final hour  
Sunlight hasn't streaked the sky for ages  
Darling, crows are useless to a fowler;  
Only nightingales and finches sit in cages."

This time the surrounding tables remained somewhat quieter and, when the final melancholy notes died away, rewarded the singer with a couple of cheers and whistles, most of them from the back tables. Javert rose, nodded at someone at those tables, and perched on a high stool at the bar, setting his guitar on his knees.

Careful not to make any noise, Valjean pushed his chair back until he was sitting at the table next to his, which was near the wall. The man already sitting there paid no heed to his new table companion. He held his stubbly chin in his hands and grinned around a still-smoking pipe, watching Javert re-tune the instrument once more.

"Not a bad sort of voice," remarked Valjean as Javert twanged now this and now that string.

The smoker said nothing but raised his thick black eyebrows and tightened his mouth in a grimace of assent. Valjean waited to see if more was forthcoming. But his table companion must have felt that he expressed himself with sufficient clarity and offered nothing else.  
The situation was saved by a waitress, who paused Valjean's old table with a new bottle and a plate of cheese and bread, looking around for her customer. Valjean signaled to her to bring his order to the new table and slipped her a silver coin. The waitress curtsied silently and left, tucking the coin discretely in some secret dress pocket under her stained apron.

"Your health," said Valjean to his neighbor, filling up the glass in front of him.

"Thank you, dear sir," suddenly said the neighbor and swiftly tipped the rest of the bottle into his own glass. "Yes, a toast is definitely in order. Such a day! Your health."

They drank.

"Did they send you a plain one or a gold-embossed one?" asked the man, wiping his mouth.

"Pardon?" asked Valjean.

The man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a familiar cream card with raised black lettering.

Valjean considered it for a few moments, then pulled out the card he had received in the post two days earlier and put it on the table next to the man's.

The two cards were identical, save for one detail: the hand-written number in the top right hand corner of Valjean's card read "01/30," while the stranger's read "17." Both gave the address of the place, date, and time - "between eight and nine in the evening" - and, oddly enough, the instruction to sit at table #2. That was it.

"Ah, a plain one, too. I hear they sent gold-embossed ones to the veterans," said the man with apparent envy.

Valjean turned both cards over. The strange emblem on the back was also exactly the same: a heater shield with an elegant silhouette of a howling wolf and below it, the Lacedaemonian device: _"melius in umbra pugnabimus"_.

Valjean sat back in his chair and glanced once more at Javert, who appeared to be deep in conversation with some barrel-chested swarthy type dressed in the tan jacket of a river-docks strongman on holiday. The man kept leaning down close to whisper into Javert's ear, and each time Javert smiled, baring both rows of large even teeth.

"I know why we've been called," declared the man solemnly.

"My heart tells me it's nothing good," muttered Valjean, quite honestly.

"I bet you a _monarque*_ you are right. Otherwise why bring so many of us in at once?"

Valjean nodded and reached for the bottle again. The situation plainly did not call for sobriety.

==========

 _monarque -_ a five-franc coin.


	2. Chapter 2

The human mind has rather peculiar mechanisms for dealing with great shock.

A man goes to bed and dreams that he had become a gargoyle on the bell- tower of Notre-Dame. In this dream he wants to button his coat to protect himself from the piercing winds; however, no matter how hard he tries to push the buttons through the button-holes, he does not succeed. In the morning he wakes up tired, chilled, and supremely frustrated - not at his hideous transformation, but at not having been able to perform such an ordinary and casual maneuver as buttoning his coat!

It would be an understatement to say that Valjean was surprised to see the Inspector alive and well after having read his death notice in the  _Moniteur_. Valjean's nature was far too impressionable, one might even say puerile to react so mildly. The old man was completely floored. Astonishment, terror, and a peculiar, wild, incomprehensible joy roiled in his heart in equal measure. And because the human mind can only take so much excitement at one time, Valjean's attention became fixated on one sole detail as he observed his own personal Nemesis re-tune the guitar in his lap.

Javert was in a state of  _déshabillé_.

In all the time that Valjean had worked side by side with Javert in M.-sur-M., he had never seen him so much as undo the collar of his coat in public - not even when invited to do so. Now the man was practically undressed. Both the short blue jacket and the red vest were thrown open; his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, exposing surprisingly dark and thin arms. Add to this olive velveteen trousers, a loosely knotted red cravat, and a dark red waist-wrap, and Javert looked no different from any other laborer in the cafe. Only his boots spoiled the impression somewhat: they were almost knee-high and made of soft leather, in the style which used to be very popular among dragoons in days of the Empire. The military tint they added to the ensemble made its overall negligence appear somehow illusory, like the necessary disarray of a bivouacking soldier.

As Valjean watched the no-longer-late inspector first class of the police Javert exchange greetings and hand clasps with the men who were fast filling up the room, he realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he no longer wondered how Javert came back to life, or whether he died at all, or whether he was really Javert and not some clever impersonator - although how clever could someone be if they tried to impersonate the fearsome and austere inspector Javert by playing guitar and singing prison songs?

Now he only found Javert's outfit strange.

"I think it's ridiculous that they are turning the General out," said the neighbor, tactfully pinching a slice of Valjean's bread from the platter.

"Hmm," offered Valjean without turning his head. The vague tone could have meant anything from light skepticism to tacit agreement.

The neighbor took it for agreement.

"I mean, I have nothing against the Pharaoh, mind you, except that he is not the General, you know? I'd understand if he actually wanted to retire, mind you, then there'd be no argument - the Pharaoh is his heir, no one's arguing with it. But to throw a man out of his own organization after three and twenty years of perfect service, and that while he's still fit and willing to do his duty? It's plain unfair if you ask me."

"Oh, quite!" said Valjean, shaking his head with not entirely fake discomfort. Talk of firing innocent people did not sit well with him.

The man sighed and sunk his chin back into his hand like an odd parody of Raphael's contemplative cherub.

"I suppose it won't be so bad. The General wouldn't simply off and abandon us. He'll be around if we need him."

Valjean felt a tic stealing over left cheek and squeezed his eyes shut to kill it on arrival. His table-mate interpreted it in his own way.

"Oh, there now, really, it won't be so bad, I'm sure. The Pharaoh knows what he's doing."

Even through the haze of confusion and frustration, Valjean felt an odd warmth towards the man for being so ready to contradict himself just to make a stranger feel better.

"Have you talked to him yet?"

"Not yet. I don't really speak much with him," said Valjean. "We have a... a history."

The man laughed once. "Haven't we all!"

"Oh?" said Valjean, genuinely curious.

The man chuckled. "Pharaoh used to be attached to our chain gang in Toulon some five and twenty years ago. Flayed my back famously once."

Valjean sifted his mental catalog for the man's face but came up empty. Of course, he would've been quite young, and Valjean was never one to examine the new arrivals for fresh beardless boys.

"Not that I was quite innocent," went on the man. "I was new at the galleys, with three years ahead of me, and he interfered in a fight between me and this one fellow from another chain... A very big fellow - I don't know what came over me to challenge him. A fit of madness. I started the fight, but Pharaoh didn't see that. He must've thought the other fellow was forcing himself on me. He and this other guard pulled us apart. I was terrified of appearing weak in front of my new mates, so I began pummeling him instead! He was so stunned he didn't even return the first few blows. Exacted his due at the whipping post from me the next day, of course..." The man sighed. "And what about you? What's your story?"

The question caught Valjean with his mouth full, for which fact he was profoundly grateful.

"You must be one of the infantry, like myself. Are you new? I've never seen you on any assignment. Whose group are you in?"

"I am afraid I am not at liberty to divulge," blurted out Valjean, hoping his voice sounded steadier to his interlocutor than it did to him.

The man nodded. "Say no more, then. I suppose you'll be leaving right after the Pharaoh makes the address?"

"Yes, that would be for the best. When do you think he will start?"

"Not until the General shows up, certainly. Although he may already be in the back room, I am not sure. In that case, quite soon." The man looked around. "We seem to be mostly accounted for." He scratched his chin absentmindedly. "Well, why don't you go ask him yourself?"

"Ask whom?"

"What do you mean, 'whom'?"

Valjean followed the man's line of sight and found himself meeting Javert's amused gaze.


	3. Chapter 3

Giving a mild, redirecting push to the chest to a happy drunk trying to embrace him, Javert inclined his head briefly towards the free stool next to his own. He was grinning. Valjean was sure he'd never seen a human being show so many teeth at once.

Taking a deep breath, Valjean stood up from the table and pushed back his chair. "It was nice talking to you," he said, giving his slightly tipsy neighbor a polite bow.

The man saluted him heartily with a half-filled glass. "Any time, my good man!"

Keeping his eyes fixed on his feet, Valjean negotiated his way through the forest of chairs, tables, legs, and wooden support beams enshrouded in dense blue fog of tobacco smoke. A few times he almost tripped on out-stretched legs and accepted casual apologies; then he himself inadvertently shoved a young man in a worn frock coat and had to offer apologies of his own. Around him, the eatery bustled, dishes, mugs, and pipes clanging against the bare tabletops; jackets and coats rustling; chairs being scooted back and forth on the hard-packed dirt floor.

Someone, perhaps a waitress, lit another lamp in the corner where he was just sitting. Valjean turned his head towards the new source of light and frowned: the chair belonging to his enigmatic neighbor was now also vacant.

He had wanted to stop two paces away from Javert, but a short man with a brown leathery face chose that exact moment to leave his seat, forcing Valjean to move out of his way and almost directly into Javert's arms.

Javert didn't seem to notice any of this maneuvering. He was engrossed in his guitar, throwing sulky glances now at the soundboard now at the fingerboard, turning the keys awkwardly with the stiff, unbending fingers of his right hand and cautiously plucking at the strings with his left. When the guitar finally produced a sound to his satisfaction, Javert looked up at Valjean, who stood before him crushing the life out of the cap in his hand.

" _Salut_ ," said Javert.

Valjean gave no reply. He had spent the entire evening under a spell familiar to him from his days in Toulon: the all-pervasive sense that everything happening to him was a dream. In Toulon, he was usually awakened from that state by a blow in the ribs from a sergeant's cudgel. Javert's friendly greeting hit him harder.

Javert nodded to the empty stool once again. "Go on, take a seat. I'm not in a rush. And neither are you, I suspect."

Valjean lowered himself onto the stool and placed his elbow on the gleaming zinc counter top. Immediately, a barman with a mess of dark rat-nest hair sprang up from behind the counter, like a jack-in-the-box.

"What would monsieur desire to drink?" he said, flashing Valjean the nervous, apologetic smile of a very polite man distracted from very important work.

Valjean was about to decline further libations, but then Javert answered in his stead:

"Monsieur would desire a glass of  _malvoisie d'Aubagne_ ," he said, without looking away from the tuning keys. "And I would like some more grog. Extra lime."

The barman was already digging around under the counter and arranging various goodies on the counter: a tall, dusty bottle; a shorter and flatter flagon with rum; half of a wilting lime; and a cutting board.

"Thank you, Michel," said Javert, carefully maneuvering the guitar off his shoulder but getting it caught briefly on his ponytail nonetheless. After deliberating for a moment, he leaned it against the counter by his feet. Reaching for the glass, which the barman had just finished topping off with boiling water from a large tea-kettle, he caught Valjean's eyes for a second and confided to him with a small sigh, as if to a bosom friend:

"These new strings are shit."

He breathed a little into the glass and took a cautious sip. "What?" he asked over the rim of the glass, raising an eyebrow at Valjean's vexed look.

"How did you know I wanted muscadine?"

Javert shrugged a shoulder dismissively. "You placed a bi-quarterly order with Father Lesouef for it back in Montreuil. I used to inspect wine shop tax forms. It was curious: the town's ascetic had an indulgence after all. And the neighborhood of the grape roused suspicion as well - I confiscated plenty of it in contraband from inmates in Toulon."

"Ah," said Valjean with a tight smile. "Even my taste in wine betrayed me, it seems."

Javert shrugged. "A man may drink whatever wine he pleases. It proved nothing."

For a minute or so, they sipped in silence that felt almost companionable.

'Why are you not dead?' Valjean desperately wanted to ask, but instead asked something completely different:

"Where are your whiskers?"

Javert raised his eyebrow slightly.

"Probably out to sea by now. You don't approve?"

"But why did you shave them off?"

"Is that really the question you want to ask me right now?" replied Javert, folding his left hand around right and leaning a clean-shaven cheek onto the resulting double fist. The pose would have been coquettish, were it not assumed with such an earnest and piercing expression.

"I suppose not," said Valjean. His fingers tightened nervously around the tall glass. He had not noticed himself empty it.

"The short answer is no," said Javert, looking at Valjean intently, as if to gauge his response.

"No?"

"No, I will not turn you in."

Valjean sagged slightly against the counter-top. His heart pounded furiously in his chest.

"Thank you, Javert."

Javert gave the half empty bottle of rum a comically stupefied look.

"Don't mention it," he mumbled to the bottle.

"All right."

"I'm not holding back out of altruism. I need you for something."

"Anything you want," said Valjean simply.

"Anything?" Javert cocked a thick black eyebrow. "Incautiously said, Valjean. You have no idea what I might want. Suppose I demand you sell your soul to me?"

"Of what use would my soul be to you?"

"Fine then, no soul. How about your body?"

The glass fell from Valjean's hand and shattered.


	4. Chapter 4

Javert contemplated at the shards of glass glistening wetly on the floor.

" _Pardieu_ , man, you must stop associating with whores," he said, extending a beckoning hand to the mousy, limp-haired girl wiping down the nearest table. "I think it's addling your brain."

"I do not  _associate_  with whores," mumbled Valjean, who felt as if steam was about to start pouring from his ears.

The girl brushed the shards into a little tin dustpan, throwing occasional glances at the older gentleman with the very white hair and the beet-red face and thinking that he looked rather like her little brother whenever  _maman_  catches him with his hand down his trousers. She wiped the floor down to a greasy shine with a rag and got a five-sous coin for her efforts from the tall grey-eyed sharp-nosed gentleman, who then waved her away.

"No whores, eh?" muttered Javert. "So who do you associate with?  _Tantes_?  _tapettes_?"

Valjean blinked at him.

"Or maybe you prefer _momes_?" suggested Javert, without the earlier lightheartedness.

Valjean's unease bloomed into full-blown panic. "Stop it," he hissed. "Stop with this... filth. Just say plainly what you want."

Javert set down his empty tumbler with a clink. A narrow hand with hairy knuckles scuttled up from behind the counter, felt around with nimble fingers, found the tumbler, and abducted it.

"Another," said Javert to the invisible bartender, craning his neck slightly. "Ah, you know what, just give me the bottle, would you? Why not. Let's have it."

The glass reappeared half-filled with steaming grog; the rum bottle followed. Javert regarded both items for a second but did not reach for either one.

"What I want from you," he said in a softer voice, "Is... To agree to a small job with... The authorities."

Valjean frowned at the oddly placed pauses punctuating the sentence.

"No, let us be more precise," continued Javert, addressing the glass with quiet intensity, "What I want from you, - that is, for now, - is to render me, and therefore the state, a service. Tonight. I do not expect it to be very taxing, unless someone whips out a knife."

Having made this enigmatic statement, Javert finally picked up the glass.

"Since when do you stand for thieves assisting the police?" asked Valjean with bitter suspicion.

"Ordinary thieves and regular police? since never," answered Javert. "But I see no good alternative in our case."

"I see now," said Valjean with bitterness. "You know I've  _chucked the tools*_  a long time ago, so you can't find it in you to turn me in, but neither can you let me be in peace. So you decided to make a spy out of me. What makes you think I'd agree? Maybe I'd rather be an honestly  _recovered horse**_  than a paid agent of the _raille***_?"

In his agitation, Valjean did not notice that he had slipped into argot.

Javert fixed the shorter man with an unblinking stare for a few seconds, then reached into his jacket, pulled a silver-plated watch out of the inner breast pocket, and gave it a brief glance.

"Be that as it may, you have approximately twenty minutes to decide between the two."

It was as if all the anger Valjean banished from his soul over the past two decades came flooding back in a torrent. Were he a little better composed, he might have remarked how liberating and cathartic this anger felt, at which point it would have instantly turned into guilt. But the only thing he could remark at the moment was Javert's neck. It was dark, he thought, and not very thick - he thought he remembered it being thicker. It would probably be the work of two seconds to twist Javert's head all the way around.

Valjean's entire thought process must have showed in detail on his rage-contorted face, because Javert smiled.

"None of that, Lisette!" His grin widened. "You didn't think I'd hazard talking to you alone, did you? There's a mate with me."

He moved his jacket open with his left elbow and Valjean caught the metallic glimmer of a pistol barrel under the counter.

"You think that little fart-machine scares me?" growled Valjean under his breath. "Do your worst and be damned."

"Ah ah ah," said Javert, shaking the pistol at Valjean slightly like a young mother shaking a rosy finger at her naughty first-born. "None of that either. Don't try and provoke me. It is useless. I don't want you dead. And you don't really want you dead either. This is why we are having this discussion, remember? I would have us co-exist in peace. So stop entertaining murderous and suicidal thoughts for a moment."

"In about... A quarter of an hour," he continued once again in a strange staccato, "I will need the help of an able-bodied man. To assist me in... subduing someone. That is why I sent you the card. Well, that is not the only reason, but it is one of them. I could probably manage by myself, but it will be more difficult. I'd rather not have things become violent. This is all I need from you tonight... To look intimidating and twist some arms. Got it?"

Valjean nodded again, keeping his eye on the pistol. There seemed to be something odd about it.

"All you have to do right now - right now, at this time, after I am done speaking - is tell me aye or nay.  _Gy ou nibergue_?"

"You will leave me alone if I do this?" asked Valjean incredulously. "I can buy my freedom and peace of mind from you with a night's odd job?"

"No," replied Javert with the exaggerated emphasis of strained patience. "The night's odd job will only buy you a night's freedom and peace of mind. The rest of your life is still to be discussed. What I am giving you right now is the opportunity to sit down to the negotiations table with me."

"Why must you make it so complicated? Just look the other way, and I'll be out of Paris before the day breaks. You'll be free of me, I'll be free of you, and that'll be the end of the story."

For a few seconds Javert said nothing, but simply sat there looking at Valjean.

"Do you honestly believe them?" he finally asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you honestly believe your own lies?"

"How am I lying to you?"

"Forget about me for a moment. You are lying to yourself. Think about it. If I let you walk out of here right now, you will be in prison until the day you die. You may find a strange village in that prison occasionally, or some fields, or a forest, or an unknown face or two, but it will still always be a prison. You will forever remain a being without a name, without an age, without a civil status - without society. If you choose to flee France, then also without a homeland and without a native tongue. This is what being a fugitive from law means. A life sentence without possibility of parole or appeal. You know this well."

Valjean opened his mouth to reply but found that he had no rejoinder.

"Admit it, Valjean," went on Javert. His speech, which was once more fluid, had taken on a hypnotic quality. "You are tired of looking over your shoulder wherever you go. You are tired of suspecting all your acquaintances of feigning friendship just to denounce you later for profit. You are tired of having to take all your walks at night. You are tired of always living on the outskirts of the town. All of this is obvious enough. But do you know what else is obvious?"

"What?" asked Valjean, his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper.

Javert leaned in close. Valjean could smell rum on his breath and cheap tobacco smoke on his clothes.

"I've given you a fair bit of thought, Valjean, and I've come to a conclusion. You are not a criminal at heart. Nor are you a big-wig industrialist, nor a mayor. You are still a peasant at heart, Valjean. You are dying inside for lack of honest manual labor. Having escaped from one prison, you locked yourself straight away in another. This is how it was for you all these years: you saw firewood at home, you make trinkets for your daughter, you fix the fence even when it doesn't need fixing, you tend to your little kitchen garden. Your walks, when you take them, are in the fields, beyond the barriers if possible - away from people. Sometimes you gather up your courage and walk through the quarter to church, or dart out to bestow some brass on the deserving poor- and then dart right back in afterwards. You read a lot of travel tales and adventure stories in your armchair. You gaze out the window towards the horizon. But it's just not enough to keep the boredom away, is it?"

"It's not enough," replied Valjean softly, mesmerized by the slight side-to-side movement of Javert's glistening and slightly bulging yellowish eyeballs.

"Yes, it's not enough," repeated Javert with quiet intensity. "But what work can you have when you are afraid to leave the house, to be seen by people? You may think to yourself: well, once my daughter marries and leaves the nest, I can risk it, I can go out. But old habits die hard, Valjean. I guarantee you - no, I swear it even - that you will be making three-block hooks around every posted  _sergeant de ville_  and every commissaire's office for the rest of your life. And you will never dare to light a candle after dark without first coming to the window to watch if the soldier guard is coming around on patrol."

"Why should I, when you have just told me that you will not turn me in?" said Valjean.

"Don't play the village idiot with me, Valjean!" hissed Javert. "To listen to you, I'm the only policeman in France! Anyone who sees you can turn you in! Anyone of the hundreds of others!"

"What others?" said Valjean stupidly.

Javert rolled his eyes.

"You really are a monster of vanity. To listen to you, it's all been just a big game between the two of us. Foolish old copper Javert and dashing outlaw  _Jean-le-Cric_ , going round and round like the dog Laelaps and the Teumessian fox. Valjean, you are not my special little secret. The police does not begin and end with me. Your arrest warrant is public. I hold no monopoly on it."

Javert's voice dropped into a sibilant whisper as he leaned in even closer. "You can be detained at any hour of the day, on any street corner, by any police agent with a  _denier_ 's worth of sense. It's been your luck that such agents are scarce, even in Paris. For now, at least. But they're not the only ones looking for you."

"You mean the Security Brigade."

Javert pulled back and bared two slightly parted rows of large even teeth.

"Aye, the Sûreté. Vidocq. A famous man. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him."

"Psht! Every housewife in France has heard of him. Do you know him personally?"

"No."

"But he knows you, Valjean." Javert smirked. "He knows just about every convict in France. He is a man with ten thousand eyes."

"Two of which are yours, I take it."

Javert tilted his head and saluted Valjean with the almost empty glass.

"But I  _died!_ " Valjean clenched his fists on the bar. "My death was in the papers!"

"So was mine," shrugged Javert. "A toast, then, to the deplorable state of contemporary journalism."

He tipped the rest of his glass into his mouth.

"Not that you didn't put on a delightful show," he went on. "That pretend-drowning act of yours, - bravo. And the accompanying heroics,  _parbleu_! I wish I had been there to applaud you. Naturally, your audience gobbled it up, because it didn't know any better. But Vidocq has been putting on similar shows since before your first arrest. He must have 'died' half a dozen times, each one under a different name and conviction. So you may have fooled the public, and you may have fooled the Crown Prosecutor, but you didn't fool ol' Mec."

"How could he have known?"

"A simple inference. He was catching up with the Head of the Prison Service Division one day, and the man told him of the untimely demise of one Jean Valjean, committed under number 9,430. Something about the story rang false to him. He wrote some letters: to the officer of the watch on duty that day, to a couple of the  _argousins_  present at the scene. They wrote back, and all three told the same fantastic story. The convict, they said, God rest his brave soul, in rushing to the sailor's aid broke his ankle chain with a single blow of the hammer! Not one of those idiots had the wherewithal to find this suspicious. Even after Vidocq pointed out to the officer in his next letter that it is impossible to bust a sound ankle chain with a single blow, the man brushed it off! 'The prisoner must've been overcome with fellow-feeling,' he wrote. 'A noble sentiment can arm a man with Herculean strength.' Noble sentiment! we thought. Sure, and also a sharp little saw to nibble at the ankle-chain at night. And thus Jean Valjean, officially deceased or not, was re-filed under 'at large' in our little rogues' catalog. After that, it was just a matter of listening for increased chatter about your favorite activity - alms-giving. Besides, there was the matter of the abduction of that little girl..."

"There was no abduction," said Valjean firmly. "The girl's mother had authorized me to retrieve her child from her temporary guardians, and to settle all her debts with them. I have this from her on paper. It's even notarized."

"There is no need for excuses, Valjean. It is hardly surprising that a man like you, invited to serve out his lawful sentence, would find some other, more urgent business to see to. Especially when a helpless child is involved." There were new, unpleasant notes to Javert's voice. "Say, whatever became of the girl?"

"She still lives with me, as my daughter."

"Does she? How about that. What a fine thing. She must be almost of age now. How long did you plan on keeping her, then?"

"She has a sweetheart that she will marry soon," said Valjean, baffled but refusing to take the bait of Javert's sarcasm. "So, not very long now, I imagine." He fought back the tears welling up in his eyes.

Javert frowned. "No need to weep for my sake," he said uncertainly. "I already said I will not arrest you. Only I must do things properly, or else we will both end up at the  _bagne_ , you for your past shenanigans and me as your accomplice. After your actions at the barricade, I've felt compelled to stay Vidocq's hand from grasping you. However, I cannot do this for much longer. I must act on my knowledge of you, either one way or another. You can't keep bobbing in the legal waters like this. And since I cannot, in good conscience, sink you, it follows that I must pull you up to the surface."

"So what do we do?" asked Valjean.

"I will ask to have you transferred directly into my charge. Think of it as a continuation of your parole, with me as your parole officer. I know you too well to simply let you run around Paris unsupervised. You stick your nose into all sorts of trouble. However, I can promise you that I will be able to furnish you with all the proper papers. Meaning that if you go and sin no more, then no police spy and no soldier can ever treat you as anything but an honest citizen."

"You mean, you will obtain me permission to reside legally in Paris?" asked Valjean, not understanding the vague offer. "Or are you talking about a... a pardon?" The last word almost made him stutter.

Javert looked at him for several long seconds. "We will see," he said finally. His tone was that of a father tentatively promising a treat after dinner to his hopeful young offspring, provided the latter's best behavior and full obedience to the nanny.

Leaving Valjean to ponder all that was said, Javert turned back towards the bar and fell into a silent reverie. Under the fold of his jacket, the small pistol remained pointed directly at Valjean's gut.

Valjean's head was swimming. Obtaining a pardon would mean a petition to the highest name. But why would the King concede the plea of a recidivist robber - and now also a rebel to boot? Was Javert offering to petition on Valjean's behalf? Javert, an old police agent whose sudden mental breakdown and suicide prompted all of a paragraph's notice in the Monitor? who was he to hope for the King's attention and acquiescence?

Valjean suddenly recalled a social gathering he attended once in Montreil-sur-Mer, a buzzing ballroom full of splendid ladies and prosperous gentlemen - the get-together called in honor of his election to the Mayor's office. Javert had been there also. It was certainly a bold move on the part of the hostess to invite someone of such low standing to a reception. Then again, Javert was known to have the ear of the secretary to the Minister of State and Prefect of Police at Paris, Count Angles. Valjean recalled that Javert had come on foot, attired conservatively in a black coat. His only concession to festivity were two Legion of Honor crosses pinned to his breast, the bright orange of the ribbons and the white-green enamel of the badges dazzling against clean but worn black fabric. The _biblots_ , as Javert had called his decorations, attracted envious stares from the men and coyly intrigued glances from the ladies throughout the evening.

'In truth, what do I know of this man?' thought Valjean as he watched Javert stare vacantly at the rows of bottles behind the bar. 'Nothing at all, it seems.'

"So what do you say?" said Javert, finally tearing his eyes away from the bottles and looking at Valjean. "Are you ready to quit your prison or are you not?"

For a few moments Valjean was quiet. Javert's speech, combined with his vague promise of legality and Valjean's own strange recollections, had had a crushing effect. He sat and listened to the merry noise around him. These are free men, he thought to himself. Well, some of them might be Surete agents, but still - they are free, though under police surveillance. Their papers are not counterfeit. They have finished their day's labor - at the workshop, or on the streets, or who knows where - and are all having dinner together, enjoying their food, their wine, and their company. Their voices aren't hushed; their glances aren't furtive; they don't conceal themselves under wigs and costumes - at least from each other. They are not alone.

_Gy ou nibergue?_

Valjean raised his eyes to meet Javert's.

" _Gy_. I am ready."

Javert nodded his head slightly. "I knew you'd see it my way," he said with approval.

With his left hand, he pulled a cigarillo from one of his numerous pockets, stuck it in his mouth and raised the small pistol to it. Before Valjean could do anything but gasp, Javert had pulled the trigger. The mechanism gave a loud click and a small bluish flame licked the cigarillo, setting it aglow.

 

* * *

 

* - "Chucking the tools" - giving up thieving.

** - "Recovered horse" -  _cheval de retour_ , a recidivist or a re-captured escaped criminal. In prison, "recovered horses" enjoyed a higher status in the prisoner hierarchy, whereas agents of authorities were usually slaughtered upon discovery.

*** - "raille" - the police


	5. Chapter 5

At the corner of Rue Mouffetard and Rue Gracieuse, under the boarded up windows of an out-of-business workers' cafe, a heavily built man of middle age clothed in a short jacket and rolled-up trousers stood leaning against a brick wall.

The shadow cast by the awning, which had not yet been removed by the owner, hid him from the chance glances of rare evening strollers. He had spent one hour huddled motionless behind a heap of refuse; he was now passing his second hour standing equally still under the awning. He watched the streets with the focus of a dog watching the short stretch of road from house to hedgerow. The stretch under his observation was bounded by the rabbit-skin dealers' booth and the new printing office on Rue Gracieuse, and by the curve in the road on Rue Mouffetard.

But evidently, even this remarkable patience had its limits. If anyone had observed this silent sentinel between half past eight and quarter to nine, they would have seen him repeatedly running his hand through his curly blonde hair and biting the inside of his cheek, which signified the height of vexation.

The streets were quiet. No tilbury had passed for an hour; only drunk workers passed by occasionally, stumbling down Rue Gracieuse and cursing as they skidded in the dust. Every so often, a stray cat would slink down from a rooftop and dive noiselessly into the side alley, drawn by the squeak of rats rustling in the garbage. At one point in the evening, two mangy toms came to armed conflict over hunting privileges within a certain territory but were quickly forced to declare armistice by a pail of gray water thrown from a third story window - the invisible man underneath was treated to some foul smells and a litany of equally foul blasphemies from a toothless hag's mouth before the window was once again shut up and bolted. Nothing at all of interest had taken place since.

When at last it became obvious that the evening was a bust, the man allowed his next breath to turn into a huge yawn. Giving the wall behind him a frustrated kick with his heel, he straightened up and surveyed the dark terrain with new eyes. Several windows were lit up; the brightest one allowed the sight of a seated girl at her sewing. The rest of the block, with the exception of cats and rats, seemed deserted.

In the distance, the bells of Saint-Medard struck nine.

"Sod this for a game of soldiers," mumbled Eugene-Francois Vidocq. Then he pulled the bill of his cap tighter over his forehead and with one last glance around him set off down Rue Mouffetard towards the corner of Rue Pierre-Lombard, where a coachman had fallen into a doze waiting for him in his tilbury.


	6. Chapter 6

It was as if the light of dawn broke over the horizon of Valjean's soul. A minute ago Javert was an enemy with a gun; now he was a colleague with a silly mechanical trinket. Such transformations, mused Valjean, do not tend to occur without the direct intervention of the Almighty.

"Why are you shaking your head?" asked Javert.

"I can't believe you tricked me into allegiance with a toy," said Valjean mildly, careful to mask his ecstatic turmoil.

"I'm surprised it actually worked, to be honest," said Javert, examining the pistol from an outstretched wrist. "Whenever I do this, two times out of three I end up looking like an unlucky suicide."

The mechanic in Valjean suppressed the theologian. "A curious little machine. How does it work?"

Javert's eyebrows made a leap and disappeared under the black bangs that fell thickly over his low, sloping forehead.

"Ay, ask me something simpler. Like where cholera comes from." He spun the pistol on his forefinger, watching the flecked coating of cheap black paint gleam in the light of the lamps. "Here, have it," he said suddenly and pushed the toy across the bar towards Valjean. "Feel free to anatomize it. Maybe you can make it work more consistently."

Valjean sniffed the gun barrel. Predictably, it smelled of naphtha.

"It's not empty - I just filled it up the other day," said Javert, as though reading his mind.

"Have you checked the striking wheel? Maybe the flint is coming loose..."

"Didn't dare to. I have no luck with mechanisms," said Javert. "Whatever I pull apart never gets put back together right."

Valjean turned the pistol in his hands this way and that, then dropped it into a pocket of his trousers. Fixing the toy would require some tools he didn't have on him at the moment.

Out of nowhere, the awareness came that someone was talking behind them: two hushed voices speaking in ever-rising stage whisper. The men spoke in argot of the barriers; one of the voices was noticeably slurred with drink.

"...fucked."

"Shut up! ... the whole world to hear...?"

"So let it hear! ... all done for, it's clear as day."

"Perhaps not..."

"...decades - decades! And now...off like a whipped cur, and the rest of us..."

"There's always the... maybe he..."

"That piece of... son of a... bloody..."

"Shut yer gob."

"What does that ... know? ... La Force... chain-gang send-offs; Toulon... a damn guard; Brest - not a toe... inquiries. ...never been inside! ...never even pulled a job! ...worth a hollow farthing."

"Better him than some arse-licker from the municipality. At least he's lived among us. At least he  _knows_  us."

"A copper is a copper," concluded the drunker voice. "He's only spry in chasing our kind up and down the streets with a stick..."

At that Javert finally turned around towards the chatterers. Valjean followed his suit. The men were practically under their elbows. One sat slumped in his seat, his face beaded with unhealthy sweat and green from drink; the other, more alert of the two, was trying to avert his eyes from the bar.

"He also kens the barrier music not at all poorly," snapped Javert. "So if you two want to discuss his matrilineage, romantic entanglements, and professional shortcomings, do it elsewhere then under his ear."

"Begging your pardon, good monsieur," said the one who was sitting upright, pressing his hand to his breast in contrition. "He's stupid with drink. I would never..."

"Sodding black-arsed bastard!" blurted out the drunk. "Devil's spawn!"

Javert regarded him with a practiced lack of expression. The drunk's companion blanched and tucked his head reflexively into his shoulders like a tortoise.

"Any further commentaries?" asked Javert mildly.

"I'm up to my balls in commentaries, you backstabbing sod!" continued the drunk, oblivious to his companion's horror. "You think I don't know why we're here? You think I don't know why you called together everyone at once? Finally got what you wanted, didn't you, you miserable fuck!"

The cry resounded in Valjean's ears with great force. He looked around, saw a multitude of still, serious faces, and realized that the cafe had fallen dead silent.


	7. Chapter 7

Javert combed the crowd with a searching gaze. Against the heavy background of silence, one could hear the soft clinking sounds from behind the counter, where the invisible bartender was re-shelving bottles and glasses, and rustling of cloth as some men shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Sorry folks - no circus tonight," said Javert as he got up.

"Tsk, man, what is this? Where I come from a man must answer for that kind of talk!" exclaimed a swarthy southern type from a nearby table. Several men "yea'd" their assent.

"Talk from a drunk is no talk at all," said Javert decisively. "Besides, his lights already went out on their own."

Indeed, the man's head was on the table, or rather, on his plate. His companion leaned in and pinched his cheek. The man half-groaned half-snorted and turned his head, smearing leftover ragout all over the left side of his face, from his mouth to his ear.

"Incidentally," said Javert, his eyes still fixed on the drunk lying face down in his dish. "Since I appear to have all of your attention, the lottery has been drawn for the use of the dartboard."

"Why does the house always get to draw the lottery?" asked some fellow behind Valjean. "That is undemocratic. We ought to draw our own numbers."

"Those are the rules," muttered Javert as he leaned against the counter and extended his arm behind him. Valjean saw him snap his fingers twice to Michel, who immediately put a lined sheet in his hand. Valjean did not even have time to see where he got it. "You want democracy, go to one of the Republican taverns. Here,  _l'etat, c'est Mere Vauquer._  You want to take it up with her directly? She'll show you democracy." Javert skimmed the sheet. "Besides, there's less cheating this way. Only as much as is necessary. Attention! the first use of the back room goes to tables two, seven, and thirteen. The time slots are the usual fifteen minutes, with one minute tie-breaker allowed upon request. Questions? No? Marvelous. You may go back to enjoying your meals."

His functions as the Majordomo concluded, Javert turned back to Valjean. "Incidentally," he said and immediately fell silent. Valjean waited patiently. "Incidentally," repeated Javert, scratching at the back of his head as though picking at lice. "You are coming with me to the first rotation, naturally."

"Alright," agreed Valjean. "I'm not very good at darts, though."

"Trust me, darts will be the last thing we'll be playing at in there," murmured Javert. His slightly unfocused gaze seemed to be aimed at something to the immediate left of Valjean's shins. "I'm going out for a spell," he said suddenly. "Wait here. If I come back and find you gone, consider your whole person forfeit, down to the marrow of your bones. Do you read me?"

"I read you," said Valjean. He was already starting to get used to Javert's peculiar speech.

"Good. See you in a few." And with those words, Javert turned abruptly on his heel and dissolved into the smoke-saturated air, as if falling through a crack in the floor tiles.

For a while Valjean simply sat and waited. Occasionally, a waitress would approach the bar to pick up a bottle of wine or brandy, which the bartender would hand to her without getting up - a disjointed arm with a bottle would periodically shoot up from behind the counter, like a drunk's deranged salute to the poison killing him.

When Javert did not hurry to reappear, Valjean fished a notebook out of his coat pocket and spent some time playing "words." It was one of his favorite little amusements and it involved constructing as many short words as possible out of one long one. In the last few years, he and Cosette, who was now almost as well-read, used to while away long winter evenings scribbling away at their respective sheets in competition for crumpets. He never won a single round and couldn't have been happier for it.

After a few minutes of intermittently staring thoughtfully into space and silently mouthing various syllables, Valjean had three more words added to his list for "denouement." Javert was still absent. Valjean bit the end of the pencil, deliberating whether it would be cheating to write the feminine form of "dement" for more points, when a heavy palm landed onto his shoulder, clasping him firmly.


	8. Chapter 8

The first thought that hit Valjean was this: it's over. It's all over. The second one was: but he had promised! And the third one was: eh?

"I said, are you enjoying yourself? Here tonight?"

"Yes," said Valjean, recovering the modicum of presence of mind needed for social niceties. "Quite."

The man beside him appeared to be in his mid-fifties - 'Halfway between me and Javert,' Valjean thought for some reason. He was stoutly built, a little portlier than Valjean himself, with blonde curls and crinkling green eyes that looked at once mischievous and innocent. In his left hand, the man held a brown leather cap with a large curved bill; his right hand was grasping Valjean's shoulder with some force.

"Am I under arrest? asked Valjean sheepishly.

"Have you done something deserving of arrest?" asked the man, tilting his head to the side like a spaniel.

"No," lied Valjean.

"Then worry about nothing," reassured the stranger and perched on Javert's stool. "So! Are you who I think you are?" he asked, measuring Valjean's form head to foot with a peculiar look.

Valjean introduced himself.

"Hmm. Yes. I thought so. The shoulders rather give you away." The man offered Valjean his hand, which Valjean grasped. "I'm Vidocq."

"It's an honor to make your acquaintance," said Valjean, somewhat surprised that he actually meant it.

"So, there you are, Jean Valjean," muttered Vidocq, not bothering to acknowledge the courtesy. "I thought he'd be unable to resist calling you. But I did not think you would actually come. That is curious. Why did you?"

"Javert summoned me," said Valjean, shrugging.

"So?" said Vidocq. His eyes narrowed. "I presume he didn't send a team of soldiers to drag you out of your bed by force?"

Valjean pulled the card from his pocket. Vidocq glanced at it, mouthing the numbers at the corner.

"No one else knew my address," explained Valjean. "I thought - well, I thought he was dead, but that someone from the police sent it, at his instruction."

"It's not the mechanism I find puzzling; it's your compliance. Why would you surrender yourself? You are wanted at the  _bagne_  for life!" Vidocq sounded incredulous.

"I promised him," Valjean said simply. "When he found me, he said he would give me some time to settle my affairs. That was a month ago."

"And now his ghost called, and you came to heel." Vidocq shook his head. "Astounding! incredible!"

"What's incredible?" sounded a familiar baritone above their heads. Valjean had never been more relieved to hear it - in large part because he had never been relieved to hear it before in his life.

"Your new friend here," said Vidocq, nodding at Valjean. "He's a thing incredible."

"'Friend'! and 'new' at that! ha!" Javert extended a long bare arm from the shadows towards the rum bottle. Having taken possession of it, he leaned against the bar and began unscrewing the tall cap.

"Where were you?" said Vidocq with vague displeasure, setting Valjean's card on the bar.

"Out back taking a piss. The Code allows for it," said Javert. "Well?"

Vidocq finally lifted his head. "Let's take this to the backroom," he suggested in a flat voice.

"Say it here," declared Javert abruptly. "He can listen."

Vidocq shrugged. "Fine, that makes no difference. I'm sending everyone home after the meeting. You included."

"Why?"

Vidocq held a disconcertingly long pause.

Javert placed the cap onto the counter with exaggerated care and took a sip straight from the bottle. "What is going on, Mec? You were jumping about this last night. Something happened. Tell me."

"There was no word from him," Vidocq said quietly.

The words effected a peculiar change in Javert's countenance. The corners of his mouth crept downward; his eyes seemed to have retreated into their sockets; the fold around his mouth deepened; his lips thinned and lengthened. In the blink of an eye, Valjean saw Javert transform into his recognizably gloomy self, so familiar from their days in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

"I waited for three hours," continued Vidocq, as if anticipating a rebuke.

"What do you suspect?" Javert asked hoarsely.

Vidocq shrugged. "He's always managed to send a note before. Nothing this time, so perhaps he was  _cracked_."

"Then it's all the more necessary that we act tonight. We may yet have time to save him, if we learn who sold him out and how." Javert looked down at his boots and gave them several shallow, barely perceptible nods, as if agreeing with their inaudible but sage advice.

"How do you intend to do this without a tip-off?" Vidocq lowered his voice: "We've got two men besides Moineau in with Patron-Minette. Neither is supposed to know we have a third. Assuming one of them found out, if Moineau can't or won't say who sold him out did it, what can we do? toss everyone in the Conciergerie and see who talks first?"

Javert carefully placed the empty rum bottle onto the counter.

"I'll need a few minutes to make up a plan of action," he told Vidocq. "Five minutes."

There was something new in his voice, something cold and vacant that made Valjean recall their stand-off over poor Fantine's deathbed.

"I'll leave you to it, then," answered Vidocq, rising from his seat.

Javert bent low over the counter, leaned on his elbows and set his mouth onto his fists. It was obvious that something horrible had just transpired.

"What happened?" Valjean asked softly.

Javert didn't answer. Instead he muttered: "Young Bernard might know, but it is early - the gas was only just lit in the gardens, it is unlikely he is back already...  _Bigre_!.. shall I run and ask anyway?"

Valjean understood little, but felt compelled to offer aid anyway:

"I can..."

"Thou canst naught!" said Javert, as if chopping something in half. Then, quieter: "Beg your pardon."

"You may say 'thou' to me."

"No," said Javert, "I may not. And thank you - but there's no point. I need something now, not in an hour. So don't mind me. I speak nonsense."

He hid his face entirely in his hands, and his muffled voice called out to the bartender: "Michel! the other bottle."

"Sorry, monsieur Javert, I'm all out."

Slowly, Javert's face re-emerged from behind his hands. His eyes were red and swollen but dry. His left cheek was twitching. "What do you mean, 'all out'? You always have two half-liters of rum in stock this time of the week."

"Not today. That was the second bottle you just finished."

Javert glanced at Valjean with round, almost childishly frightened eyes; his long black lashes telegraphed utter confusion.

"Have I really drunk a bottle and a half of rum without noticing?" he asked through his fingers. "I don't feel it."

"No," answered Valjean. "Not with me present, anyway."

Javert looked at the bartender again. Michel was drying off a row of wine glasses with a small white rag. The glasses were short, stout and clear, except for one, which was taller, looked brand new and had a greenish tint to it.

For some time Javert watched the bartender work and then asked cautiously: "Michel, was someone else here today? Someone with a particular lust for rum?"

"There was, actually," answered Michel.

"A man?"

"A man."

"When was he here?"

"A few hours past. He took a late dinner. I had just finished up taking inventory, so it must've been around four."

"And he drank an entire bottle of rum?"

"Oh yes. Finished the first bottle and half of the second one too."

"Ah hah. But did you see him _drink_ it? 

The bartender frowned. "Now that you mention it, can't say that I did. Suppose he might've poured it into a flask of his own, or into his sleeve for all I've it's seen of it. I charged him all the same. Gone is gone." 

Javert drew a single, shuddering breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his pupils had swallowed up the irises, leaving only a thin ring of gray.

"Tell me, what did he look like?"

"I didn't get a good look. He didn't encourage attention paid to his person, if you get me. Wore a long brown redingote with a large-brimmed hat, that's all I can say. I couldn't see anything of his figure or face - he kept his hat pulled down low the whole time. It was this glass he drank from, actually," said Michel, demonstrating briefly the greenish glass he had been wiping. "Asked for it specifically, yeah. Said he liked the color."

"That's very interesting," almost whispered Javert, fixing an intent stare on the glass in Michel's hands. The bartender paused in his ministrations and stared back uncomprehendingly. "May I see it for a second?"

The bartender gave the glass one last rub and handed it over to Javert, who carefully inspected it against the light.

"Is it new?" he asked, running a fingertip along the rim.

"Sure is. Just purchased twenty new ones two weeks ago."

"Did you check them all for defects? Bubbles, scratches, bumps, that sort of thing?"

"Of course I did. I wouldn't buy a bad thing."

" _Tiens! tiens! tiens! tiens!_ " murmured Javert to himself excitedly, lifting the glass to squint through its murky walls at a lantern.

"Why, are there scratches now?" asked Michel with worry and reached to take the glass from Javert. "Well, damn. Not a fortnight in use and already damaged! What a swindle! Look at that!"

Michel thrust the glass under Valjean's nose, inviting him to share in his outrage. There were, indeed, three shallow vertical scratches on the outside of the rim. The middle one was shorter than the other two, and a trompe d'oeil gave the lines the appearance of a stylized "M". Valjean wondered if it would be out of place for him to offer to buy a replacement, then decided to just leave the hapless entrepreneur a nice tip before leaving.

"Don't be too hard on your supplier," said Javert with quiet triumph. "Those lines were definitely made with intent. The man who drank from it - was he alone?"

"No, he had another fellow with him."

"A big man? A small man?"

"A big man. Very big." Michel gestured with the glass towards Valjean. "As big as him and as tall as you, I would say."

"Did they talk much?"

"No, they talked little. Well, the bigger guy said nothing at all, he just ate and drank. The smaller one, the one who drank up all your rum, he was reciting verses the whole time."

"Was he now!.."

Javert sounded fascinated. His knuckles were going now white, now brown again as he clenched and unclenched his fist.

"Michel," he said seriously. "I am now going to need you to concentrate for me, because this is of the utmost importance. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Those verses that the man was reciting? Relay them to me, as closely as you humanly can."

Michel blinked. The question appeared to have caught him off guard.

"Please, recall. What were they about?" pressed Javert.

"It was something funny about a monk and a nun. Blasphemous, though."

He frowned again and began mouthing something under his breath. Javert watched him hungrily.

"Something like... 'Oh my sister,' tam di di, something something, 'sparrow in a cage,' tam di di, 'why ever are you not'... no, no, that's not it... 'Why ever must you be my spouse in Christ...' Right, I have it! It went like this: 'Oh my darling Agnes, see how the sparrow thrashes in his cage! Why must it be that you and me are brother-sister in the world and spouses but in Christ?'"

And then Valjean heard a sound he had never heard before - a sound he had never thought imaginable: Javert gasped.

"Are you sure?" Javert's voice was so low it was almost inaudible against the din of the cafe. "Are you certain these were his exact words? He said 'sparrow in a cage'? he said 'Agnes'?"

"Quite certain," said Michel and turned away to stack clean glasses in the cupboard. "A catchy little rhyme."

Javert slumped a little in his seat.

"A bit of good, a bit of bad," he muttered, rubbing his neck. "Hmm..."

"What will you do?" asked Valjean.

Javert did not answer, still rubbing his neck and chewing on his lower lip in apparent anxiety.

Valjean waited. Javert set both hands on the counter, still staring at the wall of liquor bottles.

Seconds passed. Javert did not move but continued to sit there with a dreamy look in his eyes, his mouth half-open. Finally, Valjean called out his name. Javert did not move or make a sound. Perplexed, Valjean leaned in closer. "Javert?" he repeated

Javert continued to stare into nothingness. Both of his pupils were huge, and his lashes were dropping and rising in a peculiar rhythm, like those of an automaton.

Valjean called his name again, this time setting a hand on the man's arm and squeezing.

Javert did not react.

"What are you looking at?" whispered Valjean, trying to follow his line of sight.

Abruptly, Javert's eyes rolled into his head slightly, and his lashes began to flutter erratically.

Terrified, Valjean jumped off his stool, leaned in and grabbed the man's shoulders with both hands, clutching them tightly.

"Javert! Javert!" he whispered frantically. "Are you alright? answer me!"

Just as abruptly, the black eyelashes stopped their mad flutter. Javert blinked, raising his hands to his face and suddenly discovering Valjean against him. His eyes wandered over Valjean's face; frowning, he placed his hands on Valjean's chest, closed his fingers around the collar of his blue workingman's smock, and pulled Valjean down towards him.

Valjean allowed it. "Are you all right?" he asked again, almost against Javert's gaunt cheek.

The grasping hands relaxed into a large, warm palms. Even through the smock, the heat from them seared into Valjean's chest like a brand. "It is thou," said Javert with quiet, sedate joy, as if awakening from a pleasant dream. "Thou art here..."

The gentle, sleepy slur in conjunction with the almost caressing touch sent chills down Valjean's spine. No one had ever spoken to him this way before.

"I am here," he said, a maelstrom in his heart and peculiar ache in his belly. It felt to him as though he were saying something else, something beyond a simple statement of fact, but he himself did not know what it was.

Javert blinked again, shifting in his seat several times. "You came," he said, in a different voice now, more suspicious than happy. He no longer called Valjean 'thou'.

"I did," said Valjean quietly.

Javert opened and closed his mouth several times, as though testing to see that the muscles were under his control. His palm dropped away from Valjean's chest and onto the counter. Finally, his eyes refocused into his usual piercing gray gaze.

"...Valjean?" There was no longer any joy in his voice, only exhaustion and confusion. "But... was it you, then?..."

"There was no one else here," said Valjean.

"Ah," said Javert, squinting and rubbing his other hand over his face. "Ah, my God..." It was then that he noticed the mangled collar of Valjean's blouse. "Did I do this?" he asked.

"I think you tried to arrest me," joked Valjean weakly.

"How long did it last?" asked Javert, kneading the sides of his face awkwardly with is fingertips. It occurred to Valjean that the man was trying to sink his fingers into his no-longer-there whiskers, an old habit rendered obsolete by new fashion.

"A couple of minutes. You sat there for a while, looking at nothing. Then your eyes rolled up for a few seconds. Are you still confused? Do you remember anything?"

"I never do," said Javert wearily. "Damnation. Did I say anything stupid?"

"Only 'Ah, there you are,' or something of the sort," said Valjean evasively. "Do you want to lie down?"

"I always want to lie down," said Javert with a grimace, rubbing his face some more. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "It's nothing. Did I try to stand?"

"No."

"Thank Heaven." Javert paused and looked at Valjean's throat. "I tore your smock," he said quietly. "At the collar."

Valjean released him reluctantly and touched the tear. "No matter. It'll serve just as well," he answered just as quietly.

Javert stood up, swaying slightly. Valjean stood also, ready to catch him. But Javert stayed in his feet. 

"Here, Michel, catch," he said, fishing out a louis from his pocket and tossing it on the counter. The coin rolled; the bartender caught it against his apron-covered stomach and immediately dove under the counter again, to rattle with the coin box. "Incidentally, which of the two men paid you for the meal? The bigger man or the smaller one?" asked Javert.

"The bigger one," said Michel.

"What coin did he pay in?"

"Silver. A piece of five francs and one of forty sous."

"Ring all the  _monarques_  in your box."

Michel's eyes reappeared above the counter and asked why.

"I'm positively certain," said Javert, "that the behemoth paid you in false coin. A naughty customer, that one. So add five francs to my bill. And I'm also paying for him."

"There is no need," said Valjean, rummaging in his trouser pockets for his purse.

"Of course there is," said Javert, accepting his change and secreting it in a trouser pocket. "I invited you out. I caused the expense. So, are you ready to twist some arms for me?"

"Restraint only," said Valjean. "I will not inflict injury."

"I'll hold you to that," answered Javert. "After all, it's my arms you'll be twisting."


	9. Chapter 9

"Why would I need to twist your arms?"

"Because," Javert answered, "I will be very angry with someone tonight, and unchecked, I might kill him. It would make a huge mess. Blood doesn't come out of linen, you know, and I've only got three shirts. And then I'd need to hide the body - another headache. Best to save myself the trouble."

"How can you say such horrible things?" reproached Valjean.

For a few seconds Javert stared at him with opaque eyes.

"A joke, Valjean. It was a joke," he said flatly.

"One oughtn't joke like that."

Javert sucked a tooth and made a face.

"You know," he said with irritation, "I hold joking to be one of the natural rights of man. Life is not worth suffering through if you can't at least laugh about it."

"Is this is where you flick the butt of your cigarillo under his feet in a dramatic fashion?" came Vidocq's voice from behind. "And then exit stage left in large purposeful strides?"

Valjean turned around. Vidocq was sporting a new article of clothing: a white sash of authority embroidered with a crown and three lilies. Above them curved the words " _Police particuliere de surete_ "; below, a laurel and the bearer's title: " _Agent en chef_ ".

Javert rolled his eyes.

"Oh yes, I forgot. You're the only one who's allowed any pathos in this organization. The rest of us are just lackeys without any right to drama."

"Not after tonight," smirked Vidocq. "Then the drama is all yours." He put his thumb behind the sash and snapped it lightly, in the manner of a suspender.

"You sound far too happy about all this."

"Not happy. Resigned. This is not my first year in this bordello - I'm well used to being had every which way." Vidocq clapped a hand on Javert's shoulder. "I hate to say this, but I hope you don't stay in the new organization long. It would be unpleasant to compete with you for clients."

"I'll stick to clients referred to me by the DA," said Javert. "Saint-Marceau is never short on those."

"Crimes of passion, phht! Where's the challenge in that? Your brain will be sapped of all electricity. Besides, no one pays rewards for dock-workers knifed in a bar brawl except the government, and I know perfectly well where those eight-franc arrest bounties go: right into the pockets of your commissaire and his secretary."

"I will find some other way to make my end-of-the-month bills."

"I'll double your salary."

"Triple it. Quadruple it. What difference does it make? The minute I set foot in your private agency, I will have no career in the police to return to."

"What career in the police?" asked Vidocq bluntly. "You are fifty-two years old. Do you honestly think they will advance you? Make you a commissaire? A magistrate? you? An ex- _argousin_ , a _tsigane_ , irreligious, unmarried, not to mention... You might as well be hoping to take Chayet's place at the head of first bureau. Your odds of replacing him are as good as of replacing Primorin-Harteman as commissaire of Saint-Marcel. You think you're aiming low, but you might as well be jumping after the moon. You are a nobody, and your name is nothing. And beyond that, there is no advancement in the cards for you. You've got nothing to hope for except perhaps an extra ten francs at Christmas. Or a commendation, with forty sous tackled on bi-monthly for office expenses." Vidocq took Javert by the shoulder and shook him once. "Wake up! Are you not tired of living hand to mouth?"

Javert shrugged again. "So forgive my debt," he said with a crooked grin. "It's all in your hands, Mec. But I will not quit the police."

Vidocq took out a gold watch and checked its face, which glowed with phosphorus.

"This conversation is not over," he warned.

"Ask Gisquet nicely - perhaps he will rent me out to you like a tilbury, a week at a time," said Javert with a sigh, heading towards the backroom. The two men followed him.

"I have no need to rent what I own," said Vidocq. "For now, let us focus on this. Have you calculated the culprit?"

"It's Landot. As we could have well guessed."

"What?" exclaimed Vidocq, stopping. "Come, are you certain? Not Fauntleroy?"

"Yes."

"Impossible..."

"The truth, nevertheless."

"But why would he do such a thing? He always seemed so happy with the job."

Javert spread his hands.

"It seems his sister had something to do with it. Remember Agnes? she and Montparnasse seem to have finally arrived at an understanding. Their impending matrimony must have shifted Landot's loyalties."

"And you know all this how?" asked Vidocq sourly.

"A little bird told me," said Javert and threw open the door, inviting both men in with a mocking half-bow of a doorman.


	10. Chapter 10

Vidocq rolled his eyes to Heaven, as if calling upon it to take note of his suffering, and pushed past his agent into the unlit, windowless backroom, murmuring:

"Take care this doesn't get ugly."

"Don't I always?" replied Javert. His grin now looked very little like an expression of good humor and very much like lock-jaw. "Valjean, go in as well."

Valjean, who had heard everything but understood nothing, did not obey immediately. Instead he paused by Javert's side to look the man in the face. There was something peculiar about it.

"What's the matter?" asked Javert.

Valjean thought back to the strange fit he had witnessed Javert have by the bar and decided to risk a question.

"Are you feeling all right? You look terrible."

"Since when is that news?" said Javert through his teeth, which gave his words extra hissing consonants.

"I mean, you look unwell," mumbled Valjean, squinting in the dim light. "Something is not right. It's your eyes - they have gone uneven," he exclaimed, realizing what was bothering him.

The grin faltered.

"Uneven?"

"One is gray, but the other is black," explained Valjean. "The pupil is blown. And the other is a pinpoint."

The grin melted. Javert's right eye, which remained its usual steel gray, was still examining Valjean's face without blinking. The other eye was now a black abyss.

"Thank you for the warning," said Javert. He sounded as he looked: haggard. "I apologize in advance. This is... somewhat unexpected."

"What is "this"? What is happening to you?"

"Are you in decent form?" asked Javert. "I know you carried that boy on your shoulders a fair distance. Would you be able to assist a larger and heavier man up four and a half flights of stairs? No need for lifting. One could drag."

"I would," answered Valjean, chills of apprehension running up his spine.

"That's good." Javert turned to enter the room, but Valjean gripped his arm.

"No. Stay and explain yourself," he commanded. He had not addressed Javert in this manner since he'd been Mayor and Javert his subordinate, but his patience was at an end. Enough mysteries, thought Valjean. Enough frightful surprises.

For a few moments, Javert simply peered at him with eerily mismatched eyes. "All right," he said calmly after a while. "I weigh around eighty kilos - one hundred and sixty pounds, if you prefer. I reside on the third floor of my tenement. And there is a substantial chance that by the end of the evening, I will be unable to walk on my own."

With that, Javert turned on his heel and walked into the backroom, where Vidocq was cursing up a storm as he tinkered noisily with a busted oil lamp.


	11. Chapter 11

The sight that greeted the men entering the dark backroom must have been an unnerving one.

At the head of the square table, facing the door straight on and illuminated by a single sputtering lamp, sat Vidocq himself, his arms crossed on his chest over his embroidered sash of authority. To his immediate right sat a white-haired stranger with the torso of a bear and the ugly creased mug of a recidivist. (Valjean was under no illusions about his looks.) And next to him, under the dartboard, sat the recently deceased inspector Javert, now shaved clean of his trademark mutton chops. The mortal remains of the fearsome inspector were sucking morosely on a cigarillo and periodically exhaling small puffs of acrid blue-black smoke. His out-stretched feet formed a sort of blockade before the kitchen door.

"Welcome, welcome," rumbled Vidocq at the men entering the room and doffing their caps. "Take places wherever you find them."

Soon, all the seats on the benches around the main table were taken. Latecomers lined up against the walls, taking care not to step farther than absolutely necessary into the corner guarded by a visibly foul-humored Javert.

"Is everyone here?" asked Vidocq.

"Handles isn't, he went outside," answered a short blond fellow with a thin face pitted heavily with smallpox scars. Just as he said it, the door opened and admitted Valjean's old table-mate who bowed guiltily to Vidocq and immediately hid behind someone's back to avoid Javert's glare, which his mismatched eyes now made even more menacing.

"Well, Landot is here, but I'm not seeing Flower-Girl," said Vidocq quietly, leaning back his chair and addressing Javert rather than the group at large.

"On with the show," said Javert from his corner. "If I'm in error, I'll answer for it."

Vidocq shrugged, righted his chair and surveyed the crowded room.

"Well, gentlemen, seeing as we only have a quarter of an hour, I'm going to skip all preliminaries and get right to the point. There are two main paragraphs on our agenda today: a bit of news, and a bit of new instruction. I'll begin with the news."

He paused and surveyed the room. The men were still and silent, regarding him with intent, obedient eyes.

"It's well known to you, I'm sure, that the official winds have been growing cool towards us and ours - although I confess, I was naive enough to expect our performance at the riots to have stalled the machinery at least for a short while longer. But from the looks of things, this isn't in the cards. I know they're already licking their chops up in Palais de Justice. It'll be a matter of weeks before I'm turned out."

The room erupted in growls, curses and hisses. Vidocq turned his head towards Javert and signed a silent inquiry with his eyebrows. Javert raised two fingers to his lips and gave two shrill whistles worthy of a highwayman.

Immediately, the men fell back into their seats, all eyes shifting to Javert.

"Peace," said Javert even though there was already perfect silence. "It might not yet be the end of the world. A commissaire of the suburbs is being demoted specifically for the purpose of adopting all of you scoundrels. A certain Allard. I've worked with him quite a bit over the years. He's not a bad sort. Granted, he has no more than a pigeon's nose worth of understanding about how the Sûreté functions, but that's where you fellows might come in, perhaps." he added, almost to himself.

"There is, also, a silver lining to this cloud," resumed Vidocq. "Gisquet has been giving me polite hints for some time now to take a break from active duty. Hold your questions until I'm done, Handles."

This was directed at Valjean's old table-mate, whose right hand had been drifting slowly upwards from behind another fellow's back, as though pulled by invisible string. The hand retreated from sight.

"Knowing as I already do which way this coin will fall," went on Vidocq, "I decided to step back a bit early and cede my place, for a while at least, to the agent of my choosing rather than Gisquet's. So, until the moment when I will be asked to formally relinquish the reins of the organization to another driver... _tonnere_! would you give it a rest, Handles?"

The string, it seemed, would not be denied: the restless hand had resumed its journey upward. The short blond gave Valjean's table-mate a shove in the ribs. The hand beat another hasty retreat.

"As I was saying, before I am shown the door officially, I am putting myself on unofficial leave. So until my replacement is named by the Prefect, you all will have the honor and privilege of being shepherded personally by Pharaoh. Isn't that swell? Floor's yours, Pharaoh. Here..."

With those words, Vidocq rose from his seat in front of the lamp, waved Javert over to take his place, unfastened his sash and draped it over the man himself, with a theatrically grave air.

Javert suffered his hands without protest. "Swell indeed," he said, when the sash was affixed. "Mind you, it's for a month or two at most."

Now at the head of the table, Javert leaned forward over it, palms gripping the edge - a pose that made him look vaguely like a perching vulture. His eyes traveled from agent to agent.

"But oh, what a month it promises to be!" he said. "Surprised, children? thought yourselves rid of me, did you? No such luck. Yes, my dear ones, Papa bear is out; Mama bear is in. And her first order of business will be  _tearing off your head, Handles_ ," he growled all of a sudden, making everyone in the room crouch in their chairs. The outburst was not so much loud as it was penetrating. "Sodding hell! Whatever is gnawing at your insides, puke it up already!"

"You said 'might,'" said a familiar voice feebly from behind some backs.

"What?" (Javert, leaning even farther forward, as if straining to hear.)

"What?" (Vidocq, also leaning forward, as if ready to spring on the wretch undermining the solemnity of the moment.)

"You said, the new commissaire doesn't get how the Sûreté functions, but that's where we fellows  _might_ come in, perhaps," elaborated Valjean's table-mate's voice, as rapidly as an auctioneer. "Why might?"

Javert straightened out a bit again and turned to Valjean. "How do you like this vaudeville?" he asked. "A kingdom for a rotten orange!"

"What?" (Valjean, softly, eyebrows raised.)

"What?" (Vidocq, amused and now leaning back in his chair.)

"What?" (Valjean's table-mate, with fear, still hiding behind taller men.)

"An orange! to throw at you, Handles!" growled Javert. "Can't you control yourself even for five minutes? What am I saying - look who I am talking to! - of course you cannot. Well, no matter." Javert rocked back and forth on his heels a few times as he surveyed the room once more. "So! No sense in beating around the bush. As I said, you fellows might be of use in adjusting Allard to his new job - and then again, maybe not. Why not? Because there is talk at the Prefecture of sacking every last one of you."

A panicked murmur drifted over the table. Javert nodded along with it, as if agreeing with the sentiment.

"Yes, yes," he repeated, crossing his arms on his chest and turning to Vidocq. "There's also talk of taking our little coat of arms, can you believe it? It'll be the damn rooster now. A truly fearsome hunter, by God..."

"The Gallic rooster is a fine symbol," retorted Vidocq. "You just have no patriotism in your soul, you damned foreigner."

Javert hmphed dismissively turned back towards the men.

"Now, I realize many of you will choose to be outraged at me personally about this. Not about the new coat of arms, the other thing. You might think, 'Wasn't it Javert's job to intercede with the Prefecture on our behalf? Wasn't he supposed to be our Mediatrix, as it were? wasn't he hired to vouch for us?'"

Javert began to stroll leisurely around the table. "'And now he's stabbed us in the back, that blackguard Javert - "

At this Javert stopped directly behind the chair of one of the seated men. The man paled and opened his lips, as though in disbelief, but Javert had already moved on to stand behind his neighbor.

"'That darkie Javert - '"

The neighbor inclined his head low to the table, as though ducking a blow. But Javert moved onward, continuing to circle the table, leaning over the men he passed.

"'That whoreson'... 'that cur'... 'devil's spawn'... 'pederast' - to this one I really do take offense - learn your Greek - I do not defile children."

His circumnavigation of the table complete, Javert took his place once more at the table and leaned once more on his palms, rocking back and forth slightly once more. Valjean could not help but notice that all the faces that looked gloomy and worried at the beginning of his journey now looked either terrified or, in the case of those Javert passed over, perversely enraptured.

"'Who does he think he is, coming in here, displacing our Mec and then sacking us all?'" Javert nodded a few more times. "I understand. Believe me. I know what it's like to do your job to the best of your ability, obey your duty, bust your hump for eighteen hours a day, line and reline old clothes without end, and still receive slaps instead of praises from your superiors. Here is the long and short of it: the authorities don't trust you. Whether this is deserved or undeserved - let us not speak of that right now. In any case, I have no orders to launch any new internal investigations. But here is my honest advice, to those who can set aside their grudges and hear it. The authorities want initiative from you. So when Allard comes in, - perhaps in a month, perhaps in two months - come and present yourselves at his office during open hours. Be nice, be polite. Be clean. Smell good. Dress in your best clothes - by which I mean, your most respectable clothes, not ones shot through the the most gold thread and hung with the most gaudy bangles. Leave your earrings at home - most of you look ridiculous with them in, anyway. Do not spit on the floor. Ask for a minute of Monsieur Allard's time, and don't leave the waiting room until you get it. When he sees you, bow deeply, and make a case for the police retaining you on their lists. Be honest about your contributions: neither boastful nor shy. Swear your commitment to the law. Something tells me that you stand a better chance of not being turned out if you actively push to be kept. Yes, Allard is eager to re-start the Sûreté with a clean slate. To him, that means getting rid not only of confirmed malefactors, but also of suspected ones. And you, my nice fellows, are all suspect by default. But if you go to him and make the case that you are honest, and want to remain so, your odds will improve tremendously."

He sighed.

"Of course, I realize that some of you - I will not name names, you all know who you are - will see it as licking the Prefecture's arse. Working for Vidocq allowed you to spy on your one-time comrades and accomplices not out of a late-blooming love of the law but out of spite and vengeance. This allowed you to retain a measure of self-respect: you were not police agents, just wronged  _pegres_  avenging yourselves and cleverly milking the city for it. Well, no more of this. From now on, you will need acknowledge a very simple thing: whatever you may have been in the past, henceforth, you are men of the police."

He leaned forward on his hands again, extending his neck once more over the table.

"And if that thought does not sit well with you - if being a police spy is not your cup of tea - if being perpetually squeezed by the society of lawful persons on one side, by the society of thieves on the other, living your life despised by both, - if that sounds like too raw a deal, too high a price for remaining in the clear... Then do not come back after you leave tonight. That way, we shall all know where we stand with each other. Of course, next time we meet, I might not be so sweet and pleasant. But if you return and then I find out that you've been playing me and the city false..." Javert bared his teeth. "Well. Use your imagination."

"Why do they want us gone now?" asked someone's sad voice. "Why not five years ago, when the Mec first resigned?"

Javert shrugged and sat back down. "Who knows. The magistrates of Paris are a whirling, ever-changing lot. This is why I always tell you: do not seek to placate them. The protector you might win today could turn into a millstone around your neck tomorrow. Set your course by the Code, and you will not fail. Well... ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you will not fail. The hundredth case is between you and your conscience."

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table.

"Those of you who read foreign papers, - I know a few of you do - remember how a few years ago there was all that hoopla about an English physician who was treating women in child-bed by sticking a little hose into veins on their husband's arms and letting some of their blood flow into their wives? Got fabulously rich off it, apparently. Well, a fellow tried doing this in France once upon a time as well. Not recently, but almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Only he tried it with animals. What? Don't look at me so. I read sometimes. Well, the man's first effort involved putting some lamb's blood into a feverish boy. The boy lived. So far so good. Then a laborer came to him, also ill. Sheep's blood for him. The fellow went back to work the next day, rejuvenated. And then a young nobleman was brought to him, at death's door. The good doctor decided on a dose of calf's blood and delivered that into his veins. The man seemed to get better - he awakened, he began speaking - hope was restored to his family. 'Well!' thought the doctor. 'If I can do this much with the blood of one calf, perhaps the blood of two shall cure him altogether!' But when more blood was poured into the patient, he began to grow feeble again, and before the procedure was finished, he died. Right there on the table."

The men looked puzzled.

"The point is this," said Javert and spread his palms sideways on the table, as if measuring a fish, or something rather less decent. "Twenty years ago, the police of Paris was very sick. Practically at death's door. Contagion was overcoming it. The city could not handle all the new people pouring into it, and all the malefactors that the crowds brought with them. Thieves ran wild. Who knows how far it might have gone, had Vidocq not introduced himself into the feeble arm-vein of the police and poured in some new blood. The police was rejuvenated - it became more alert, it was able to handle the illness of the city a bit better - enough to give the citizens hope. But years went by, and as the new blood kept pouring in, the citizen body began to reject it. What used to be a mechanism of rejuvenation became yet another illness. I am describing to you the opinion of the authorities, the best I understand it. So if my suspicions come to pass, and the Prefecture does turn you out, don't take it as a slight against you personally. At the end of the day, we all serve at the pleasure of the magistrates. And they want to drain some of that unsuitable blood back out. That's life."

"Easy for you to say," said one of the men brusquely. "If they decide to sack all the ban-breakers, you won't be kicked out of town."

"Is that what you think?" Javert snorted. "Believe me, if they want me out as well, something useful will turn up."

A heavy silence hung over the room. Not since Toulon had Valjean seen that many gloomy faces.

"Well!" said Javert, raising his eyebrows yet again and grimacing. "Now that I've sufficiently upset everyone, you're all dismissed for the evening. Except you, m'sieur Landot. Stay a bit - we'll chat."


	12. Chapter 12

It might have been the poor light from the oil lamp that made Valjean imagine the slight twitch of Landot's shoulders - or maybe the unfortunate agent, who was now barred from the hallway door by the exiting crowd and from the kitchen door by Javert's chair, also detected sinister notes in Javert's light-hearted " _blaguerons_ ". Either way, by the time he turned around, nothing showed on his face except meekness and servility.

"Let's go breathe some fresh air," suggested Javert with a pleasant smile, rising from his chair and pushing open with the tip of his boot the door leading into the kitchen.

Landot took an unsure step forward, then paused again, as if debating whether to follow Javert into the dark kitchen or "tear claws" through the crowd. Sensing his cue to act, Valjean put his palm on the man's back and gingerly led him out of the room, taking care neither to push him nor let him dawdle. The two made their way through the stacks of pots and dishes towards the slightly ajar door into the back alley, where Javert's cigarette glowed like a red firefly in the cool evening air. At first Valjean thought they had the street to themselves; then he discerned another such firefly in the shadows about a hundred paces away, huddled up against the wall under the busted latern at the street corner.

"Any news from the frontline?" asked Javert when the door behind them was shut.

Landot stood in a kind of stupor with his eyes fixed to the ground.

"You are not dead," he said in a quiet non-sequitur. Valjean realized that this was also how he had sat through the meeting, fiddling with the oilcloth on the table and never lifting his eyes from it. "You are alive."

"Indeed," courteously affirmed Javert.

"But you drowned yourself a month ago! The papers said so, they said laundresses found your body, that it had been looked into, that you went mad and left a rant against the Prefect on the table at the station on Place du Châtelet, and Vidocq said that you left a will behind naming him executor…" Landot's narrow chest rose and fell quicker and quicker. "Where have you been this whole time?!"

"Let us discuss the details of my death later. For now, let us discuss the details of your life. Are there any news?"

Paradoxically, the query seemed to quell Landot's panic. The agent half-leaned against the wall and stuck his hands into his trouser pockets.

"Not really. They've been laying really low since June. They're scared. Vidocq put the fear of God into them when he flat-rolled Colombat and his men on Cité during the hubbub. Now Babet talks of dropping out altogether and 'undertaking Lyon.' Guelemer has holed up in his lair in Arche-Marion and talks to others only through notes. We think he might have taken ill. Montparnasse…"

"I see you don't want to speak," interrupted Javert, as if he had heard nothing. "That is not nice of you. Not polite." He took a last shot drag on the foul-smelling roll-up, coughed once and rubbed out the left-over bit of singed paper on a wet paving stone with his boot. "Have you really got nothing for me?"

"That's it. Sorry if it's slim," said Landot hoarsely. His throat convulsed in a nervous swallow.

Javert nodded, then suddenly moved in closer, forcing the man to press back full on against the wall.

"Listen here, Landot, my patience isn't infinite," said Javert. "I would have us talk this over at a leisurely pace, tucked away in our basement on Sainte-Anne, or maybe at Rue de Pontoise - there's a nice little office there with locks on doors and grated windows with drapes. But alas, time is short. Let us recap in brief. Two weeks ago, an industrialist's widow is slaughtered in her own home along with her  _fille de confiance_. The house is robbed of three hundred thousand francs in gold, jewelry, and banknotes. Vidocq received not one word of warning from you. This vexes him, as you might imagine. And now instead of pointing me to the man who did it, you tell me that Patron-Minette is running scared, wrapping up its tools and settling their accounts in town? This is all highly irregular, Landot."

Javert moved in so close that his hovering now verged on gross indecency.

"Where is the money, Landot?" he muttered into the man's ear.

"I don't know," said Landot. Sweat poured down his sallow cheeks.

"Ah, you don't know," echoed Javert with a snake-like hiss. "Who killed the widow, Landot?"

"I don't know that either," said the man, blinking moisture away rapidly.

"Ah, you don't know that either!" echoed Javert again, tilting his head and widening his eyes even further mockingly. "So what do you know, then, Landot, other than how to eat the government's bread?"

The kitchen door opened. Two men stepped out, laughing and gesticulating to one another, and turned right, taking no notice of the scene suggestive of outrage to public decency playing out a few steps further down into the alley. Landot watched them go with hungry eyes and a drooping mouth. It seemed to Valjean that he was fixing to call out to them for help. But then the men turned the corner, and the moment was lost.

Javert turned the agent's face back towards himself with his left hand - not lasciviously now, but warmly, like a doting brother attending to a younger sibling's careless scrape. He no longer crowded Landot against the wall but sheltered him. The mockery was gone from his eyes.

"Look, kid," he said in a different voice now, tired and sad. "I was not born yesterday. Something has happened. I can see it plainly. But unless you confess to me, I can do nothing to help you."

Landot remained silent.

"I promise, I shan't eat you if it's true," said Javert. "It happens to the best of us – it had certainly happened to Vidocq plenty of times. But you have to tell me. You must."

The look of sheer bewilderment on Landot's face was almost comical.

"Were you found out, Landot? Is this what terrifies you so? Did they discover your affiliation with us?"

Javert's voice all-but brimmed over with compassion. Valjean found it rather unconvincing, but Landot must have been an amateur in the art of deciphering Javert's intonations, because he shuddered and grabbed himself by the hair, tearing at the thin greasy strands.

"It's true! I have been found out!" he groaned, sagging into Javert's arms, which opened instantly in a comradely embrace. "Ah, my God, my God!" he went on moaning. "I am lost! I cannot go home – they'll slaughter me in my bed! And what of my sister, my poor Agnes? Who will protect her from those fiends? Ah, my God!"

Through the entire monologue, which had been liberally salted with tears, Javert clicked his tongue soothingly and patted the distraught agent on the back. "Courage, my brave friend, courage," he murmured solemnly. "It is all over for you now. Come, let us walk. I have a fiacre waiting."

At the mention of a fiacre, something like alarm quickly passed over Landot's tear-streaked mug, but Javert was already embracing him with the broad sweep of his right arm, and Landot had no choice but to let himself be led away.

Behind his back, the fingers of Javert's left hand beckoned Valjean to follow.


	13. Chapter 13

From a distance, one could almost take Javert and Landot for dear friends heading home after a night of cards or billiards, so affectionately did the taller man's arm seem to drape over the shorter one's shoulder. A slightly closer look, however, showed that Javert's left hand was performing odd and unfriendly motions behind his back: either peeling something away, or ripping something off, or clawing something out. Whatever Landot was telling him, he did not seem to be finding his tale very convincing.

"So! the infamous Jean Valjean," sounded a voice to his left, and Vidocq appeared at his elbow, as if condensing on the spot from the summer evening air.

"I am Jean Valjean, yes." How strange it felt to affirm his identity without fear.

"You and Javert. Quite a history between you."

"I suppose."

"How long have you two known each other?"

"About twelve years," Valjean said, deciding to discount their brief acquaintance in the Toulon galleys back in the early days of the Empire.

"Know him pretty well, then?"

"Not really."

"No? But he runs into you on a public thoroughfare, demands you submit to be arrested, and you are ready to go back to the galleys, just like that?"

Valjean shrugged.

"I was tired of running. Besides, I have nothing to live for anymore. I am old and alone. Why not make some  _cogne_  happy with the reward for my recapture?"

He avoided mentioning the absurd wave of regret and sorrow that had washed over him when he learned from the Moniteur that the reward would not go to Javert after all. It had taken him by the throat, as if by ambush; for several days, he found himself unable to so much as rise from his bed.

"So you two are on moderately good terms, then? No hard feelings? No personal animosity?"

"Not on my side," Valjean said firmly. "The man did his duty. I knew that."

"Tell me," asked Vidocq with curiosity, "how did it happen that you two ran into each other so much? The first time, well, we can chalk that up to coincidence. Who among us hasn't moved up north to be mayor of a small town, only to run into one of his old  _argousins_  as the local enforcer? Just one of life's little commonplaces."

Valjean said nothing. The spy's sarcasm was wearisome. Javert's own needling irony was far less aggravating by comparison.

"But the fact of the matter is," continued Vidocq, "that my Javert swears up and down that he had run into you some half a dozen times in the last few years. You seem to haunt him like a specter. He would see you in some hovel or other, in the face of a passer-by on the street, in a particularly broad silhouette in the evening dark..."

"His powers of observation are indeed prodigious," allowed Valjean with a small smile.

"So there was some truth to it? It was not just his yearning imagination playing tricks?"

"We had run into each other several times, yes. I succeeded in eluding capture, but he always knew me straight away. I could never fool him with any guise."

"That, at least, doesn't surprise me. He has studied your form well," muttered Vidocq cryptically. "But if you had run from him all the times before, why did you surrender now?"

"I am too tired to run anymore," replied Valjean. "I am quite old. What would be the point? Another year, another marathon; no end in sight; no peace..."

They turned a corner. There was no longer anyone standing under the broken lantern; the other cigarette had long been extinguished. Meanwhile, Javert and Landot were picking up the pace. Javert's arm, extended earlier in comradely support, now dragged its prey mercilessly along the pavement, as if to an inexorably ignoble end. Landot made occasional weak attempts at breaking free. Valjean was already debating whether or not to run up and restrain him, when Vidocq began to speak once more:

"So that last time - how did you come to meet Javert that night a month ago?"

"Morning," Valjean said, distracted by the motion's of Landot's right hand, which seemed to be aiming to reach for something secreted underneath his vest. 

"What do you mean, morning?" asked Vidocq, surprised. "He said he found you at dusk by a sewer exit with a half-dead boy on your shoulders."

"He did, but I had first encountered him that day at dawn, when I arrived at the barricade and found him tied up in the tap-room of that café."

Vidocq grabbed Valjean's arm hard, forcing him to stop.

"I think you'd better tell me the whole story now," he said quietly. His eyes burned with such a terrible fire that Valjean momentarily forgot all about his intentions of running ahead. "Tied up? in a tap-room? what the devil mean you?"

Valjean explained briefly his sojourn to the barricade and Javert's subsequent near-execution that noon.

"That whoreson," hissed Vidocq when Valjean had finished. "That lying, scheming, suicidal whoreson..."

Ahead of them, someone shrieked.


	14. Chapter 14

Valjean dashed towards the sound.

The screams, now muffled, were coming from a side alley. It turned out that while he was being questioned by Vidocq, Javert had decided to step up his own interrogation and dragged his prey into a narrow gap between two hovels, which Valjean would never have taken for an actual street had there not been a crudely painted sign with an arrow and a list of house numbers nailed nearby.

Valjean found both men in a state of great agitation. Landot was pressed up flush against the wall; Javert hovered over him like a starving vulture over a half-dead rabbit, his palm covering the agent's mouth and most of his face with it.

"Everything all right?" called out Valjean.

"Everything is  _super_ ," growled Javert without taking his eyes off the terrified man. "Come have a gander, Jack. We're just getting to the nail of the program."

Valjean came closer and leaned against a ladder nailed to the side of the house.

"What are you going to do to him?" he asked with feigned nonchalance.

Javert hmmed through the nose. "That  _is_  a puzzle. What does one do to traitors who sell their own comrades out to the enemy for several dirty pieces of silver?" he mused out loud, tapping his chin dramatically with a forefinger and frowning in mock consternation. After folding a fist against his mouth and making some noises to indicate vigorous cogitation, Javert nodded a little, as if having come to a decision, leaned his free hand on the wall to the left of Landot's head. The wretch flinched.

"Now, do understand, Landot, - no, no, don't shut your eyes now, look at me!" Javert's long forefinger lifted Landot's chin and held it in place. "Do understand that if it were just anyone you betrayed, you might have fared slightly better. But you betrayed someone dear to me and thus forfeited your whole person to my not-so-tender mercies."

"Will you take him away for questioning?" asked Valjean.

"I really ought to, oughtn't I?" said Javert and sighed loudly. "Duty, procedure, protocol - they are all such tiresome things, aren't they? I think I will take a holiday from them for tonight. He will not be taken away. No, I have in mind something else entirely."

"What?" asked Valjean.

"I'm going to hang him!" exclaimed Javert with horrifying cheerfulness and began to undo the cravat around his neck.


	15. Chapter 15

"Are you  _mad_?!"

"There are certainly those who would say so," conceded Javert, his left hand around Landot's throat and his right working furiously to untie the knot of his cravat.

In the back of Valjean's mind, something was signalling for his attention, but Javert's sudden shift from irate police agent to assassin confused him too much to make sense of what it was. He stepped forward and grabbed Javert's right wrist, pressing just hard enough to give him pause.

"Stop it," he said. "This is impossibly cruel. Whatever this man has done, it is not up to you to decide whether he lives or dies!"

"Careful there," said Javert sarcastically. "Next thing you'll be saying that it's not up to me whether or not to detain him for questioning or let him run along in peace."

"Well, it isn't!" exclaimed Valjean. "I hope to God you did not make up this entire comedy for the sake of teaching me some kind of lesson. You must know I never blamed you for pursuing me. You were doing your duty; I did not like it, but I did not fault you for it. Do your duty with respect to him, too."

Javert skewed his eyes briefly skyward, then pulled his hand carefully out of Valjean's grasp, which gentled instantly, and continued to undo his cravat. "As pleased as I am to hear this - and I truly am, - occasionally, one must make exceptions."

"What exception can there be from duty?"

"Is this still the world I woke up in this morning?" mused Javert out loud, visibly annoyed. "Am I really having this conversation with you of all people?"

The knot finally yielded, and Javert pulled off the cravat. "Here. Cease your sermonizing and hold this while I wake him."

It was only then that Valjean noticed that Landot's head was slumped against his chest. The wretch had fainted.

"Come on, laddie-o, wakey wakey," murmured Javert, slapping the man's flabby cheeks. "No sleeping on the job. Am I going to have to bring out the smelling salts?"

The smelling salts turned out to be unnecessary. After several hearty slaps, Landot came back to with a start - and immediately began to kick and strike at his captor for all he was worth.

"Well, don't just stand there!" grunted Javert, his face red from the effort of containing his terrified victim. "Lend a hand! We had a deal!"

Cursing himself silently three ways from Sunday for being a fool, Valjean stepped into the battle arena and pulled the men apart, pushing Landot back towards the wall with one hand and keeping Javert away from him with another. Now free of Javert's grip, the puny agent shied back as far as he could under the ladder and squatted there in the corner, trembling.

"Keep away from me!" he squeaked. "I didn't do nothing!"

"I'd say you did nothing, you turd!" growled Javert, struggling theatrically against Valjean's relatively loose grip on his shirtsleeves. "Nothing except change your colors under our trusting noses! Where's that damned cravat?"

"In my pocket," said Valjean.

"Hand it over!" Javert made another spectacularly inadequate effort to break free.

"Is a cravat really your best idea?" asked Valjean evenly.

"Right you are," growled Javert lustily as he struggled. One could think that he was being held in place by steel clutches, even though Valjean's fingers were barely clenched around the fistful of his shirt front. "Yes, yes, it would suit more to hang him with his own  _twisty black guts_!"

"Ah my God, my God!" moaned Landot, rocking back and forth in his little nook.

Apparently deciding that the man had reached what interrogators call "the condition," Javert slipped effortlessly from Valjean's grasp and yanked Landot out from under the ladder and up against the wall.

"What, what, what have you told them?" he roared, smashing Landot's back into the bricks with each explosive "what".

"Only that there was another agent in the gang besides me, nothing more, I swear!" sobbed Landot. "I don't know the man - I don't know who it is! It's only that... I hadn't... Mec gave me a letter to deliver a few weeks ago, didn't say to whom, just told me to drop it off at our agreed-upon drop-box and come back to Rue Saint-Anne straight away. Curiosity got the better of me, so I steamed it open and read it! It was in his hand, and he wrote of this "other man" with Patron-Minette. Went on and on about what high hopes he had for him, what a great job he was doing. I became so angry, you know? Was that all he trusted me to do - deliver his letters? And then for spy-work he sent another fellow in? I had been putting myself on the line every day for him - I was sending in reports, shadowing men, doing everything he asked. I had even scooped them on a small affair they were going to pull on an old Jew's clockwork shop - the Surete got two arrests out of it! I didn't see a  _denier_  of that reward money! And then a couple of weeks ago Montparnasse goes and asks me point blank: are you with the  _cognes_? 'Cause if you are, and you don't admit it right this minute, says he, and you don't tell me how many of you worms are infesting us, I know where your pretty sister lives, and I'll send you her head in a bucket. And you know Montparnasse - he'd do it and not even blink twice! Tell me, what was I to do?"

By now Landot had talked himself up into something akin to righteous rage. Being wrongfully suspected of incompetence must have weighed heavily on him.

"Tear-jerking story," said Javert snidely. "Pity my handkerchief is in the wash. What happened to the other agent?"

"Nothing! nothing at all happened to the other agent!" cried Landot. "No one's been done in yet, so he must be all right."

"If I find out you lied..." Javert pressed Landot into the bricks again. "Now tell me who murdered the widow. Speak!"

Landot shot a desperate look at Valjean, who was observing the interrogation with apparent indifference. "Friend! I don't know you, but please, have a heart! The man is a lunatic! He's in a fit - he'll tear me to shreds!"

"He looks sane enough to me," remarked Valjean. "I would tell the man what he wants to know."

"Yes, tell the man what he wants to know," echoed Javert.

"Why should I speak? You won't believe me anyway!

"Try me. I might surprise you with my gullibility."

Landot made a motion for Javert to lean in. He did. So did Valjean.

"Nobody knows who did the widow in," whispered Landot. "They all suspect that one of them did it in secret. And there's no doubt of that - no one outside the gang knew there was that much money in the house. Babet had sounded a source at Lafitte's - some disgruntled clerk or other. Got him drunk. A bottle and a half later, he was spilling beans left and right, about how the old lady came in and cleaned out her accounts. Said she had been convinced the bank staff was dipping their fingers into them. Then after the hit, Patron-Minette tried investigating on their own, but everyone had alibis with family or  _largues._ 'Course we all know those aren't worth a hollowed-out sou. What lass wouldn't give her man an alibi? Or what mother her son? And now they know one of them is a police agent - well, two of them, but they don't hold me for an agent anymore, I swore I came back into the _pègre_ for good. So they're wondering if Vidocq set the whole thing up, had the widow done in himself to take the whole gang down for it. I wasn't lying when I told you they were in panic - I wasn't,  _pardieu_! You know what they've been doing for the past couple of days?"

Landot glanced around with a mysterious air and began to speak into Javert's ear.

"They've split up into pairs! You know, to oversee each other, so that the police agent couldn't report back to the  _flics_! Guelemer paired with Claquesous, Montparnasse with Babet, and they assigned the rest by lottery. I myself was supposed to stick with Flower-Girl, but that nincompoop broke his leg yesterday, slipped in the gutter. I left him at Hotel Dieu last night. So if he's your man, that's where you'll find him."

A heavy carriage was heard approaching at full speed.

"That's your ride," said Javert impassively. "Come, let's go."

"I'll take him," sounded Vidocq's voice suddenly. Javert relinquished his prey to him without objections.

"Don't bother detaining him at the station. No detention at the Conciergerie, either - too many eyes. Bring him to La Force and toss him in the solitary," he instructed. "Lead him in with a bag over his head and a cape draped over his body. No one is to see him arrive. Sign him in as Pere Chose and pick the guard you trust most to wait on him. No exercise in the  _preau_  with the other prisoners. Take care he does not start  _making music_  on the walls to signal others."

Vidocq gave him a look such as a fond father might give to his toddling child who is trying to teach Papa the White Pater-Noster, then shook his head and lead the prisoner by the arm out of the alley, towards the 'salad basket' police van with several  _sergeants-de-ville_ milling about.

Valjean and Javert remained alone in the narrow alley. 

"What now?" asked Valjean. 

Javert did not answer. His chest was rising and falling irregularly, and he was sagging again the wall.

"Are you..."

Before Valjean had finished the sentence, Javert collapsed.


	16. Chapter 16

Valjean was not as quick as he used to be, but even so he got there in time: Javert folded into his arms instead of head-first into the cobblestones. The former inspector of Montreuil-sur-Mer made for a disconcertingly bony armful.

"'m all right," Javert murmured into his chest. The deep rumble of his voice sent odd tremors throughout Valjean's frame, settling somewhere low in his belly and turning it soft and achy again.

"Sure you are," said Valjean, pondering how best to lower Javert to the ground.

"No, no, I am," the man went on stubbornly. "I'm fine. My head spun for a moment."

In truth, Javert's legs did seem steadier now. Valjean leaned him cautiously against the wall and looked him in the face. It was impossible to discern the man's color in the darkness, but his pupils were still eerily uneven. Valjean hesitated for a brief moment, then pressed two fingers to Javert's neck. The skin there was clammy, and the man's pulse was racing.

"You ought to go home and lie down," said Valjean quietly, lowering his hand to Javert's shoulder and kneading it gently.

Javert shook his head, cringing - whether from pain or from his suggestion, Valjean couldn't tell.

"I got a little dizzy. I'm fine now."

"Nonsense. Grown men don't just fall over if they get a little dizzy," said Valjean in his sternest 'Monsieur le Maire' voice.

Javert sagged back further against the wall, sliding out of Valjean's grasp and all the way to the ground.

"We-ell," he said, folding into a sitting position with a wince, "this grown man does. More often than he'd like."

Valjean crouched down to face him.

"You heard everything, then," said Javert.

"Should I not have? I would have left..."

"No, that's not what... ah..." Javert seemed embarrassed. "Did you hear everything he said directly into my ear?"

"The whole thing about the gang splitting up into pairs, you mean?"

"Splitting up into pairs..." Javert's face was beading up with sweat. "Right. And then?"

Valjean shrugged.

"They must be doing it out of precaution, like he said. To prevent the unknown agent from reporting back to you."

"No, you don't get my meaning..." Javert licked his lips and took a deep breath. "Repeat everything to me. Everything he said into my ear."

"What for?"

Javert's mouth tightened.

"Do you recall that row over the dead girl's bed? You kept trying to tell me something, but you didn't want her to hear, so you kept lowering your voice, and I wouldn't let you, but you kept at it, and then she started shouting over you, and I lost my temper?"

Valjean remembered perfectly. He had not thought Javert heartless before that day.

"You were speaking into my left ear then as well."

"What of it?"

"Come, don't be dense." Javert gestured to his head. "It can't have escaped your attention that there is a huge dent in my skull on the left side. A souvenir from Russia. Well, I will tell you, when a bomb bursts next to your head and takes half of it off, it does not spare your eardrums. It is of no use to speak into that ear."

Valjean said nothing. His thoughts were somewhat jumbled.

"I heard everything fine until he started whispering. But after that..." Javert spread his hands. "What did he say? Don't shout," he hurried to amend, "it makes everything worse. Speak as you always do."

As Valjean was finishing his summary, footsteps sounded behind them, and the alley was illuminated by the yellow glow of a lantern.

"Almost forgot," breathed out Vidocq, fumbling for something in his trouser pocket. "What's this?" he asked, seeing Javert on the ground. "Another spell?"

"Just felt like sitting down."     

"I thought you were done with all that?" Vidocq clicked his tongue. "Well! you're certainly going home after this."

Javert raised his eyes and frowned. "What happened to your face?"

A dripping red scratch extended across Vidocq's right cheek.

"Landot lost his temper. And then a couple of teeth. He's got claws worse than yours, you know."

"Better wash it well. I keep my claws clean; I wouldn't assume the same of Landot."

"Fisch got it worse from him. Right in the eye." Vidocq winced. "By the by, how did you manage to summon a team with a 'salad-basket' from here?"

"Mother Vauquer's boy ran a note to Rue de Pontoise for me," said Javert.

"But where did you find a writing station?"

Javert crooked his mouth in a feeble smirk. "Nowhere. I brought the note from home. Good for emergencies. The messenger can always give the location themselves."

"Clever of you."

Javert leaned back. "You're the clever one here, 'Gene... I'm just out taking in some fresh air."

Vidocq harumphed and pulled some papers out of his pocket. "Here, you wanted the list of stolen articles from the Saint-Leon house."

"Much obliged," said Javert, taking them. "And what's this?" he asked, separating a smaller, crisper sheet from the two larger ones. "Is this..?"

"It is," said Vidocq.

"Well, I'll be...  _Nom d'un chien_!" exclaimed Javert. "Look," he said and thrust the paper excitedly under Valjean's nose. Valjean could discern little of the dense writing in the gloom of the alley, but a chill went down his back when he saw the oval stamp in the lower right hand corner:  _Depot de la Morgue._

"You owe me a louis," said Vidocq.

"Sure, of course," muttered Javert as he read.

"It's only fair," went on Vidocq, even though Javert had conceded his point. "I did have to pay the municipals for fishing your hypothetical corpse out of the river. Everything had to be played by the rules, including the fee."

"I can still hardly believe we did this," said Javert, extracting a thin billfold and a small leather purse from behind his waist-wrap. "Who wrote this up?"

"Well, you'd better read and find out," grinned Vidocq, accepting the louis.

Javert squinted and brought the note close to his face, then pulled back, then brought it close again.

"What the..." he murmured. "' _Srs. Daube and Bouille_ '?"

Vidocq slapped his knee heartily and let loose a volley of happy snorts.

"You bloody imbecile," declared Javert wearily.

"Don't worry, it's perfectly all right," said Vidocq. "The copy is already in the archives. The justice of the peace paid no attention to the signatures."

"And if he had paid attention?" wondered Javert. "Would you have said you held a necromantic seance to summon them?"

Vidocq shrugged.

"Look here, what did you expect me to do?" he asked mildly. "We already fabricated the body. Someone had to make the Department one imaginary corpse richer, and a trick like that could ruin a medical's career. At least this way the blame couldn't get pinned on anyone specific. Just be glad that it played out well. As far as the Prefecture is concerned, you've been dead since the revolt. Whether or not you want to disabuse it of the notion is entirely up to you."

"At least you didn't sign it 'Citizens Daube and Bouille,'" grumbled Javert, folding the sheet in half and then again in half so that it would fit into the billfold. "Too bad nothing good came of all this."

"We did get some results."

"Hmm, yes." Javert tilted up his snub nose. "A dead widow, a dead companion woman, an emptied-out safe, and an agent in mortal peril.  _Marvelous_ results."

Vidocq waved his hand dismissively. "The house was a  _poupard._  They've been nursing this affair for months. But with you out of the picture, they actually went ahead and did it. And we would have been waiting for them if your little protege had bothered to send us a word."

"Or if Landot had bothered to do the same," parried Javert. "I trust my little brother far more than I ever trusted your pet. If Moineau didn't warn us, then he couldn't have."

"A message is not made any more trustworthy by virtue of being in rhyme."

"No, but it is made more trustworthy if the man passing it isn't a coward and a traitor," replied Javert coldly.

"Admit it: you cannot tolerate the idea that an ex-con can be as good an agent as that naive twit..."

"Do you know why Landot turned on us?" interrupted Javert, his voice dripping with contempt. "Apparently, he peeked into one of the letters you had him deliver to the drop-box and read your praises of the new imbedded agent! Two consecutive brilliant moves on your part: to set in writing that we have more than one man in with Patron-Minette and then have one of them deliver the letter! And Landot matched brilliance for brilliance: he assumed that he was about to be deposed from his position of responsibility and became determined to make you pay! It never even occurred to him that  _he_  could have been that new agent you were praising!"

Vidocq opened his mouth, closed it again, then said through clenched teeth, "Be that as it may, Montparnasse threatened Agnes."

"Horseshit. Montparnasse has been lovesick over Agnes for months. The only things that stood between them were his  _largue_  and Agnes' brother. The largue was nothing much to look at, a lousy scrawny addled kid, but no way would Montparnasse want to cross her parents. Her father is a first-rate scoundrel, and you don't want to even know what sort of a creature her mother is."

Javert shuddered theatrically and continued:

"But then our 'Parnasse had a stroke of uncommon luck: during the riots, his  _largue_  got herself shot at the barricades. That I know for a fact, I saw her body myself. What that creature was doing there, of that I have no idea. So now Montparnasse could marry with impunity, except for the question of money. He would need togs for himself and the Madame, you see. And stylish carriages for the bridal cortege, and a ceremony in a fashionable church, and an entourage with rose petals, and an orchestra with dancers. Not to mention a nice first-floor apartment for the bride, with a pretty chambermaid, and a colored cook from the Islands, and a liveried footman. At least for a few months, to keep up appearances. But where to get such money? No sense in carrying on in his usual way and picking off bourgeois stragglers. Stuffing the kitty with one golden louis or one silver watch at a time? why, he'd have hair as white as Jack's here before he could marry! No, this called for a  _grand-fanandel_  kind of job. Luckily, they had that Saint-Leon house in sights."

Vidocq held the tenuous silence of a growing thundercloud.

"Now there was only the matter of Agnes' ass of a brother, who'd been acting rather nervous and twitchy as of late. And we can't have nervous and twitchy around when a big job is about to go down. Montparnasse corners him and hoppah! everything spills out. That'd have been the end of Landot, except there was the matter of the other agent. Landot might not know who it is, but if he carries on as he did, surely he could find out and thus redeem himself? Montparnasse issues a temporary stay of execution, and there we are. Ask Landot why he came today. I bet you a case of brandy it was solely to get that other name out of you."

Javert began rising unsteadily to his feet. Valjean picked up his cap from the ground and gave it to him. Javert took it without thanks and pulled it down low over his forehead.

"I'm going home," he declared to no one in particular and headed out slowly up the alley and towards the street, steadying himself with his hand against the wall as he went.


	17. Chapter 17

"Will he be all right?" asked Valjean, watching as Javert hailed the sergeants by the police van.

"He'll manage," said Vidocq gloomily. "Make sure he gets home in one piece."

"Of course. Does he take anything for these spells, any medicine?"

"Medicine!" hmphed Vidocq. "He's missing a chunk of his head; what medicine can fix that? I bring him hashish when I find it. Sometimes it helps. I don't think he has any right now." He sighed. "He was doing so well. A whole month free of fits."

Valjean recalled Javert's glassy terrified eyes.

"Is he in pain when they occur?" he said quietly.

Vidocq shot him a sideways look.

"He says he isn't. Look, just get him home safely, unload him in his apartment, and leave him be."

"Leave him be!" Valjean frowned. The thought of abandoning Javert in that state was unthinkable. "What if he falls and hits his head on a sharp corner while no one is around to help? I will stay with him until he is well."

"Then you will stay with him until the end of your days," mumbled Vidocq as if to himself. "And his by extension."

"What?"

Vidocq stepped in close to Valjean until they were almost nose to nose.

"What am I to do with you, Valjean?" he said quietly. "What am I to do with you both? I cannot do this again. Do you understand? Once was enough. No more."

Valjean looked at him uncomprehendingly. Vidocq looked him over from foot to crown with the critical eye of a slave trader.

"How old are you?" he asked brusquely.

"Sixty-two or sixty-three."

"Well, there you are then."

"I do not understand," said Valjean evenly.

"Understand this: you and Javert are not friends. His magnanimity towards you, it is not an act of friendship. It's a decade of turmoil and confusion, capped by your saving his life. Now he finds himself morally incapable of doing you harm. But rest assured, it is nothing but a moral dilemma. Put all other thoughts out of your mind."

All of a sudden, a grimace of fury contorted his face.

"What, you think he's going to open his heart to you now?" he hissed, bathing Valjean's face in spittle. "That you'll be his companion and faithful dog now? Take care, Valjean. You don't know what a quagmire you're treading into! Hear me well: Javert  _hates_  you."

A chill went down Valjean's spine. "Hates me? Why?"

"Because you confuse him. You muddle his thoughts. You have haunted him from every corner and every side alley for over a decade. With you, he feels uncertain of everything, including himself. Especially himself, I would say. You are a virtuous monster to him, a foul angel - an impossible, horrible thing. He wants you punished, and he wants you exalted. You make his existence hell. So after you see him home, you will leave, and you will not visit him again. In fact, you will leave Paris and go to England. I will arrange for your papers personally. Or else I'll haul you into Palais de Justice myself."

"All this because I saved his life?" said Valjean, incredulous.

"Because you are you, and you have now also saved his life."

"And what am I, pray tell?" challenged Valjean, fury rising in his breast. "What am I that you are not also? You are the same as me, and yet he takes orders from you, and I see now that you hold him in bondage with debt. A virtuous monster! I am only a man. I did nothing but suffer since I grew into a man. I rooted evil out of my soul weed by stinking weed. Why should he hate me for it? And what if I did save his life? I had the means, and it took me little effort. It was only a favor repaid. He had saved my life once, when I had been captured by bandits; now I have saved his in return, when he was captured by revolutionaries. I do not care if he does arrest me. Let him rest easy on that account. If his conscience demands it, I will go with him willingly."

"So you would give up your liberty to assuage his conscience? A fine sentiment!" sneered Vidocq. "What else would you give up to him if he desired it?"

"What else could he desire from me?"

The sincerity of Valjean's confusion must have puzzled Vidocq, because he frowned and drew back.

"What else, indeed," he muttered. "Tell me: why did you lie that you've only known him twelve years?"

"It's no lie," said Valjean, surprised.

"Are you saying you don't remember him from Toulon, when he's been a guard there for most of your sentence? Years of seeing a man every morning and evening, and throughout the day on random checks, and on convoys, yet you don't remember him?"

"I didn't say that," corrected Valjean. "I do remember him. But I did not know him. One doesn't know the guards any more than their dogs in Toulon. You had been there, you know this."

"I had been there," said Vidocq with a crooked smile. "And I met him there as well. Yet I remembered him quite well."

"To me he was just another demon in a blue uniform," lied Valjean.

"No different from any other?"

Valjean shrugged.

"Less quick with his cudgel, perhaps. A bit less foul-mouthed."

Vidocq narrowed his eyes.

"So not the fellow who got put on double shifts for pulling men out of line up to go to the infirmary rather than the quarry? Or the one who argued with the others that cudgeling without provocation was unauthorized punishment? The one whom other guards despised for spoiling their cruel fun with us?"

And that sheet of numbers, thought Valjean, that sheet of numbers they said he brought to captain Thierry that time. With the cost of our dinner beans and the cost of our linen, and how he reckoned it all out: half a sou more spent per inmate's dinner and two sous more per week for linen would yield the  _bagne_  at least a franc a week per person in labor, and that if they would just allow us some straw to sleep on, to be changed weekly, it would pay off handsomely in lower infirmary costs, what with so many fellows getting sores, and how could you not, working outside in one set of clothes, rain or shine, then going to bed on hard planks in the same clothes. The other guards laughed at him for weeks, but they stopped laughing, didn't they, once he started his crusade against Pillot to be drummed out for laming that boy with his cudgel, no, then they ganged up on him, and what a shit-storm that was, Chenildieu was beside himself when they all got two months double duty and a week's pay docked, crowed and crowed how he's ready to believe in God after all, and then the big-shots, the  _grand fanandels_ , who had money sent them and ate meat every day and held half the galleys in bondage to them, they held a counsel and passed the hat around for him, one old horse thief coughed up a whole  _bouton_ , but when the  _barberot_  tried to give him the bag of coins, Javert flung it back it in his face with his bandaged hand and said that he'd rather chop his fingers off entirely rather than take alms from thieves and rapists, that we were all scum and born of scum, and then he gave everyone on his chain fatigue duty for a week...

"I kept out of the  _bagne_  politics," said Valjean evasively. "A guard was a guard. I did not distinguish between them. I hated them all."

"So when you met him up in Montreuil, you did not notice the change in his temperament?"

"I suppose so," allowed Valjean. "He had never been that melancholy in Toulon."

It was true. Javert never laughed in Montreuil. He had laughed in Toulon, - rarely, but wildly, with abandon. Valjean remembered that queer laughter well - a howl punctuated by hiccups, as though Javert were moments away from choking. Sometimes it would ring in his ears in the dead of night and taunt him, robbing him of sleep, and the next day he would glare holes in the back of Javert's dark curly head. In Montreuil, Javert had been much quieter. When accosted by something truly side-splitting, something that would wring laughter even out of Valjean himself, Javert would bring forth a single burst of sound halfway between a sob and a bark. And then he'd stop, as though exhausted by the effort. By the time they met in Paris, even that sound was extinguished: at the barricades, Javert had laughed silently.

"Melancholy!" snorted Vidocq. "One could say that."

"Was it his injury that changed him so?" asked Valjean.

Vidocq glanced to the side and rubbed his hand over his chin.

"The injury did not help," he said.

"Is it his debt to you?"

"That is none of your business."

"How much does he owe you?"

"Two million with interest. Don't even think of buying him out, Mister Threadbare Philanthropist. Put it out of your mind. The debt is a necessary thing. Javert would not be alive today if it weren't for that debt."

"How can that be?"

"Because when an otherwise honorable man decides he no longer wants to remain alive, there are not many options left to his friends!" hissed Vidocq. "Don't look shocked. Javert would've done himself in years ago if not for that debt. Certainly religion never held him back. But he owed me some money..."

Vidocq's voice trailed off. He turned his head to look out of the alley, and Valjean saw a flash of real pain in his eyes.

"A hundred francs," muttered Vidocq, watching Javert's white shirtsleeves flash in the dark as the man gesticulated, debating something with the sergeants by the prison van. "He had paid his half of rent for the quarter, but not... And afterwards, well... He had forgotten. It's no wonder - he was in a daze. He had forgotten a lot of things. He left the apartment as it was. Packed almost nothing with him. I wrote to him that I took care of the apartment and that he now owed me for it. What else could I say? I'd said it all already - that he was my friend; that the service needed him; that it was stupid and unmanly of him... He didn't hear a word of it. When he asked to be transferred away from Paris, I thought this was surely the end. He wanted to drown himself but didn't want his body on display in the Morgue, so he was going away to do it someplace no one knew him. It was a godsend, these hundred francs. I demanded them back from him. He wrote back, promising to repay within the month. But then he wrote that he was unable, and could I wait another month? Spring came, and with it another letter: more apologies. Then he stopped writing. I feared the worst, so I took a post coach to visit him. Happily, I found him alive - if you could call it that."

Vidocq's sudden laughter held a distinct note of frenzy.

"God bless your municipality! Three hundred francs a year! three hundred francs was all you paid him."

Vidocq whirled around and grasped Valjean's collar.

"May your miserliness be credited to you in Heaven!" he exclaimed. "You saved his life with it. He had made eight hundred a year in Paris, and even that barely sufficed him, and he only had to pay half the rent here! He is terrible with money. Always has been. He buys himself nothing, he eats irregularly, and yet money trickles right though his fingers. He must have his soap and water. It is an obsession with him. And yet in Montreuil, for the first time ever, I found him dirty. I almost did not recognize him. He had become wretched. He walked around in his winter coat, and it was summer when I found him! Buttoned up to the throat, shirt cuffs pulled up into his coat sleeves, so that no one could see how dirty they were. No vest - it was first to be pawned. Everything on him was filthy, even the linen. Laundresses are rough with poor men's shirts; what gets washed regularly must be replaced regularly. And when the shirt came off, you could count all his ribs. But he was still alive. Thank God, I thought. Everything else, I could fix. He owed money, not just to me now, but around town as well. So I paid off his debts and told him he only had to worry about me from that point on. Every year since, I posted him another three hundred francs, so that he could keep body and soul together."

Valjean allowed the torrent of words wash over him in silence. He tried to think back to his first meetings with Javert in Montreuil-sur-mer, back when he was still Father Madeleine, not Mayor Madeleine. He found little to grab onto: the vague silhouette of an upright figure in a gray overcoat, never unbuttoned, eyes invisible under the brim of his battered hat, throat covered by the leather stock, hands hidden in his sleeves, as though he were always cold. At some point, the figure began casting heavy leaden gazes at him, following him with its eyes when they passed each other in the streets. Valjean had refused to allow himself to react to them.

"By the time he moved back to Paris five years later, he was almost two thousand francs in the hole," continued Vidocq. "The Paris Prefecture raised him from eight hundred to a thousand francs a year. Mighty generous of them. Plus eight francs per arrest. For a while he lived in a tiny insalubrious garret; then he learned that his old place, the one he had abandoned five years prior, had lost its tenants. So he moved there again, to live alone - and pay rent alone. He sold all the possessions I had put in storage for him - everything that sentimentality permitted him to sell. Three hundred francs down. He began to spend eighteen hours a day on his feet, always tracking new prey. But then reality checked his ambition yet again. The eight francs per arrest existed only on paper. In the real world, the commissaire took half, because he was the seigneur, and Javert's informants took most of the rest, because Javert was fair. That left him a six or seven sous premium per arrest. And thus he began to pay down his debt: seventeen hundred francs, at two or three francs a week."

"Then he concocted a scheme. Suppose he arranged for a pension, then died and willed it to me, along with the rest of his property? Not all of it, mind you, since there's that matter of his brother, but enough to cover the remainder, about eight hundred francs. I knew of it, so I ordered him to fork up the money before he died, for certainty. A conundrum! And yet not an inescapable one, as he reasoned out: if he can't die by his own hand, he just needs to get killed. Not intentionally, of course, but honorably, in the line of duty, sword in hand. Seems easy enough, right? Every criminal in Paris wants him dead, after all. He'd be blameless! But fate has it in for him again. Headfirst into every fray, and not a scratch. And Parisian rogues are a superstitious lot: they think him charmed now. No one even attempts on his life anymore; he shows at the door, and they follow him like lambs to the prison depot. The uprising could've done it for him, and yet here he is, still alive, thanks to you, and bloody furious about it. God knows he tried hard that time, almost sabotaged his own operation, which is really sinking to a new low for him..."

Vidocq rubbed his hand over his face again, as if washing without water.

"Look," he said, "I won't tell you not to give him money - I know he won't take a centime from you. But don't try to become his dearest friend and faithful keeper. The last time someone decided to do that, it ended very badly."

"How did it end?" asked Valjean.

Vidocq looked hard into his eyes for a few long seconds, as if searching for signs of subterfuge.

"Badly," he repeated finally. "Stay away from Javert."


	18. Chapter 18

"Well now! Are you two enjoying yourselves?"

The men whirled around. Javert stood leaning, or rather sagging, against the corner of the building. The eerie, unhealthy gleam in his mismatched eyes was discernible even in the dim yellow light of the lantern on the ground.

"This really takes me back," said Javert breezily. "Last time two convicts fought over me, I was seventeen. Hey, don't stop," he said as Vidocq took a step back. "Not that either of you will get anything from me - I'm not that sort of boy. But by all means, continue. It is amusing. Here, I even have a favor for the winner."

Javert reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a large, visibly soiled handkerchief and began fanning himself with it daintily.

"We're just talking rides," said Valjean mildly. "Who is going where."

"I am going home," said Javert. "And I'm taking you along."

"Oh, really?" said Vidocq with a slight curl of the upper lip.

"The cab is already engaged. His place is on the way," shrugged Javert.

"That is good," said Vidocq mildly. "It is good that you know where he lives. But do not forget: so do I."

Valjean thought he saw Javert bite the inside of his cheek, as if holding back a sharp retort.

"Go home, Pharaoh," said Vidocq in a low but clear voice as he picked up his lamp again. "Sleep well. Then come back tomorrow afternoon. Late afternoon. Evening, even. I don't want to see you before that," he warned as he walked out of the alley. "I'll take care of Moineau myself."

"Godspeed,  _mon dab_ ," said Javert with a note of sarcastic adoration and pressed himself closer to the wall to let Vidocq through. His white handkerchief waved a mocking farewell to the man's wide back.

"I heard you two yelling, you know," he said. "Vidocq is a man of many talents, but he is constitutionally incapable of speaking quietly. Your first day in our venerable organization, and already you have quarreled with the chief. Well done. Still not one to submit to authority, I see. Even a near-criminal one."

"Technically, you are the chief now," remarked Valjean.

" _De jure_  maybe, but never  _de facto_." Javert stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. "No one can really head the Surete while Vidocq is alive. It's a philosophical impossibility. Prefects and their secretaries come and go, the chair of the Second Division acquires fresh arse-prints, but Vidocq abides. His is the Surete kingdom, the power and the glory,  _sicut in caelo et in terra_."

"Didn't he get superseded once already a few years ago?"

Javert exhaled a little gust of air. Had there been any mirth in it, it would have been a snicker. "Now, where did you hear that?"

"Read it in the papers." Even today Valjean recalled with perfect clarity the smugness of one particular polemicist in the  _Moniteur_  who extolled the 'long overdue' pro-activity of the Prefecture, which has finally seen to the dismissal of 'that wolf in the sheep's clothing who prowled our quays and alleys with his nose forever trained on the smell of easy money and vulnerable persons.'

"You of all people ought to know better than to trust in the papers, Monsieur Lost-at-Sea."

Javert stepped out of the alley. Valjean followed him.

"No, he didn't get fired that time," went on Javert. "He resigned. Four years and two usurpers later, he returned as the rightful master. That lasted only six months. Now I'm his heir. A month at best. And then the whole troupe will be absorbed into the second division." Javert scratched his head. "Interesting times are once more upon us."

There was the whistle of a whip in the air as Vidocq's cab started noisily down Rue de Fontainebleau. Javert followed it with his eyes, his mouth curving down.

"Yeah, bye!" he bellowed out of the blue, holding his palms to his mouth. "Bye-bye, _poil de brique_!"

A hand made itself visible from the cab window and gave a spirited, if rude, rejoinder to Javert's sally.

"The clod," mumbled Javert. "Why must he be always a plug to every barrel?"

Then he glanced at Valjean with something like worry.

"So then - want a lift? I live on Rue Pavee. The one near La Force, not the one near Quai de la Tournelle. It is not far from you. I have a cab waiting by Jardin des Plantes. Come, let us walk off some of this excitement."

* * *

 

"...dead serious: twenty years now I've served with him, and he still takes on these ridiculous paternal airs... As if I can't manage my own self without his assistance."

"He worries about you."

"Well, he can keep his nose out of my affairs, that's what I say. What I do in my house is my business. And I'll tell you something else: I'm getting damn tired of..."

* * *

 

"...strictly speaking, the new stipulations are just that no one with a criminal record can head the Surete. But seniority also plays into it. I'm only an inspector. Vidocq is right, it is unlikely that I will be promoted further. And the head of the Surete is officially an officer of peace, and his salary is five or six times that of an inspector. They would much rather shift a commissaire from the banlieues into the position. My commissaire wants the job, too - he's pretty fed up with being a quarter-eye in Saint-Marceau. But he won't get it. Which is good, because he is completely and utterly..." Javert inhaled and exhaled noisily through his teeth, then cleared his throat. "...Utterly indispensable to the service in his current post."

"Ah?" asked Valjean, raising his eyebrows. "A...  _capable_  official, I take it?"

"A man of practically limitless capacity, yes," affirmed Javert, quirking a corner of his mouth. "At least two bottles of Anjou in the course of a single dinner."

"They should take you," said Valjean, more seriously. "What does a commissaire know about criminal informants - even a competent commissaire? Or disguises? Or thief customs? You're by far a better candidate for the job."

"Trying to butter me up with compliments?" Javert's eyes flashed above his somewhat smug half-smile.

"Just being honest."

"You? honest? Well! Call the press together..."

* * *

 

"... was little waiting for me at Toulon except more of the same, and I rather thought I'd outgrown the profession. So I followed the invading armies into the capital and showed myself on Vidocq's doorstep one fine spring morning. He had written to me before, back when I was still a guard. I thought he would not turn me away. And he did not. Though before he hired me, he first insisted on putting me through a little test of dexterity and craftiness. You won't guess what it was."

"What?" asked Valjean. 

Truth be told, he was not attending so much to the story as to the friendly rumble of Javert's voice. He had known this about him, he realized now. Even back in Montreuil-sur-Mer, whenever Javert came to him to make a report on the day's incidents, he would often go on and on, in a monotone at first, then with ever more excitement. Sometimes, Valjean let him talk himself out, amused; other times, when he was busy, he would be forced to interrupt him. Right now, he had no desire to do so. If brooks could babble in a baritone, thought Valjean to himself idly, they would sound like Javert in a chatty mood.

"He sat at a desk, put a gold watch in front of himself, and asked me to steal it from under his nose," said Javert with a grin.

Valjean laughed. "An unfair test for an honest man."

"Unfair, maybe, but not so tough as all that. It's all about misdirection."

"So you took the watch?"

"The watch, his billfold, some papers he had on his person... It was capital. He hired me on the spot but was cross for a week. Incidentally, have you noticed that we are being  _spun_?"

The query was delivered in precisely the same low and friendly murmur as the rest of the story, and for a few seconds Valjean had not understood Javert's meaning. When he did, he stooped to re-buckle a shoe that did not need it. Javert paused beside him.

Somewhere behind them, a fraction of a second too late, someone also stopped, but not before the scuffle of their shoes on gravel reached Valjean's ears.

"You're right," said Valjean, straightening back out and looking at Javert slightly askance. "Do you know who it is?"

"I have an idea," answered Javert sourly. "I hope to God I'm wrong."

They passed by a crooked little fence put up around a plot of barren land to be developed into a Martineaux lodging house, according to a crookedly lettered sign nailed crookedly to the said crooked fence.

"Looks like the construction craze has penetrated at last even Saint-Marceau," remarked Javert. "A few years late, but even so. What is the world coming to?"

"Hopefully a rejuvenation of the neighborhood."

"'Rejuvenation' implies that there was ever anything here worth being called 'alive'. As far as I'm concerned, Paris on this side of the bank ends with Jardin des Plantes."

"There are no neighborhoods which cannot be made prosperous," said Valjean.

"A pearl of mayoral wisdom from the great Sieur Madeleine?" smirked Javert, though without rancor. "Forgive that I hold my applause, but I fear scaring off our little pursuer."

"How do you know he is little?"

"I have this little feeling about him." Javert brought the fingers of his left hand together, leaving behind half an inch or so space between them. "I also have this bald feeling of him being quite bald."

Valjean skewed his eyes as far backwards as possible without rolling them inward into the orbits.

"He's wearing a cap."

"He's bald under the cap, I am sure of it."

"And now he is taking it off and brushing a lock out of his face."

"I still say he's bald under the cap and the hair," asserted Javert. "But let us go make sure."

Without any warning, Javert turned around, tugging on Valjean's sleeve. Their shadow, who had just emerged from behind the fence to proceed after them down Rue de Jardin des Plantes, was caught several steps away from his possible nook of concealment. To his credit, he did not attempt to run but stood his ground as Javert approached him with huge strides.

"Hello, Sasha," said the shadow in a voice that was not masculine and at the same time not quite that of a woman.

Valjean could swear he heard Javert's teeth grind together.

"It's always Javert to you, Marie."


	19. Chapter 19

"You'll always be Sasha to my heart," lisped the stranger. For a relatively young man, - name and effeminate intonations notwithstanding, it was doubtlessly a man - he seemed to be missing quite a few teeth.

"You have no heart, Marie. You are an invertebrate mollusk."

Javert addressed the man in the familiar.

"Ah, and you are still so unkind! And in front of a strange gentleman, too."

'Marie' shifted his eyes to Valjean, measuring him head to foot with a wary stare.

Javert tsked. "You are right. Where are my manners? Marie, this is Jean Valjean. He used to be known as 'Jean the Jack' in some circles a couple of decades ago. You remember, I'm sure. You were already an old hand then. One gets wise fast with an early start, eh, Marie?"

The man took a small step back. "Why do you persist in calling me that?" 

"Why shouldn't I, when it is your name? And when you persist in calling me Sasha, without any right to do so?" Javert turned to Valjean. "Make acquaintance, Valjean: this is Marie-Bartholemy Lacour. Among old hands, Coco - for his extraordinary thick head. A celebrity in his own limited right. By proxy, as it were."

"How do you do?" The man extended a small hand to Valjean. After a second's deliberation, Valjean shook it gingerly.

"I've heard of you, monsieur Jack," said Lacour, somewhat admiringly "Tales were flying about your exploits in Bicêtre twenty years ago. You were a strange sort: crafty, powerful, and yet somehow with no manner of luck at all. Three escape attempts!"

"Four," corrected Valjean.

"Unbelievable! Out of the chains and re-taken every time!"

"There were some rather keen eyes watching me," said Valjean, glancing briefly in Javert's direction.

"Don't look at me," mumbled Javert. "I wasn't even attached to your wing. It was Mathieu who was watching you returned horses."

"It was you who apprehended me the second time around, or don't you recall? You and two very bad-tempered sergeants."

"I recall well enough: two bad-tempered sergeants, and yet it was my arm you broke resisting. Left me something to remember you by,  _pardieu_!.. In any case, dear Coco was Head of the Sûreté under prefect Delavau. Or maybe it was under Delavau's little fop of a secretary, Duplessis. Or maybe under both of them. Vidocq and I never did figure that out."

"Still as unkind as ever," sighed Lacour again, taking off his cap and adjusting his bangs in the same way that Valjean spotted him doing it earlier, - not so much brushing them upward as turning them sideways. Apparently, Javert had been right: the hair was false. "But that is fine. I have long resigned myself to your contempt." He replaced the cap on his head, tilting it rakishly over one ear.

"Plug your fountain and talk business. Why are you spinning us?"

"I wanted to speak with you, but you seemed so preoccupied back at the cafe... And then afterwards, with that fellow you were throttling..." Coco gestured in the air with his cigarette.

Valjean recalled the bright red firefly. "It was you smoking on the corner," he said.

The fellow smiled a thin bloodless smile. "And what about yourself, my good man?" he asked. "What are you? a new bullfrog in our little swamp? Or maybe..."

"You don't get to ask him any questions," interjected Javert. "You still haven't answered mine."

Even in the darkness, Valjean could see the corners of the younger man's mouth droop.

"Well, well. Could it be?" he said in a less pleasant voice than before. "Has Sparrow's big brother, the monk*, finally found himself a new friend after all these years?.."

"That is _no_ business of yours," growled Javert low in his throat.

"So he _is_ your new friend." Lacour's voice was now quieter and duller. "My God... When did this happen?"

"Come, Valjean. Let's go." Javert pulled Valjean ahead by the sleeve.

"Stay," said Lacour. His voice had become even softer, and, Valjean thought, sadder. "I have news of immense value to you, if you're ready to have them from me."

"What news might those be?" Wariness crept into Javert's voice.

"Will you be kinder to me?" asked Lacour hungrily.

"Kindness must be deserved. You have proven yourself a scoundrel and a backstabber many times over, both to Vidocq and to myself."

"Don't bring my dealings with the hog into this!" hissed the man. "He has nothing to do with anything. I've never played you or your little Moineau false!"

Javert recoiled. "You have news of Moineau? What do you know?"

"I know that you love him."

"Of course I love him; he's my baby brother!"

"I also know that he is in grave danger."

"So speak!"

The man paused, lowering his head and scraping at the ground with his shoe, as if in reticence. Finally, he said:

"What is your brother worth to you?"

Valjean's blood ran cold.

"How much do you want?" asked Javert with a sigh.

Lacour looked pointedly at Valjean. "Send your man here away, and we'll talk."

"Whatever news you have of my brother, he can hear them."

Lacour shook his head.

"No. It's my terms we are discussing now, monsieur, not the news. That you can share with him to your heart's content. But I prefer our negotiations to be conducted in private. So if you would be so obliging."

The man began backing up towards the crooked fence.

* * *

 

* - monk:  _moine._ sparrow: _moineau_ (lit. "little monk)


	20. Chapter 20

Valjean was startled from his doze by the sound of gravel crunching under firm footsteps. He heard Javert's voice speak a few indiscernible words to the coachman; then the door of the carriage swung open, and Javert ducked inside to take the seat across from him, bending low to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. The cab rocked slightly with the new weight.

Picking up the tail end of his sash, which had come unwrapped, Javert shut the door - to Valjean's ears, a little more firmly than there was need - and knocked thrice on the roof.

As curious as Valjean was about Javert's negotiations with the malicious effeminate, he held back his tongue. It was obvious that whatever conversation had taken place between the two men had left Javert in the foulest of moods. The ex-inspector sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers intertwined so tightly in a double fist that the tendons of his forearms bulged below his rolled up shirtsleeves.

"I hope you don't mind if we stop at a place on the way," murmured Javert almost too softly for Valjean to hear him over the clatter of wheels on the uneven pavement. There was a slight tremor in his tensed muscles.

"Not at all."

Javert nodded, then glanced askance at him:

"Or I could drop you off at your door. It makes little difference to me."

"Where do you wish to stop?"

"A place on Rue Planche-Mibray."

"What's on Rue Planche-Mibray?"

Javert exhaled a doleful little laugh.

"The aim and purpose of my bargaining with Coco... that nasty little shit-for-brains cock-sucking son of a poxed whore."

Valjean, who hadn't heard a litany of profanities quite so foul since his days in the galleys, couldn't repress a start. Noticing this, Javert began to laugh a false little laugh, exhaling occasionally through his nose and inhaling with mournful little noises somewhere deep in his throat. Finally, the sound lost its last semblance of laughter and degenerated into a groan; Javert dropped his face into his palms and dragged his fingers across his face.

"Dear God in Heaven, how have I sinned that Thou hatest me so?" he mumbled into his fingertips.

"What did he demand of you?" asked Valjean despite his earlier intentions of keeping quiet.

Javert remained quiet for a few seconds.

"When all you have left is your dignity, then that's all you have left to sell," he finally said. Then he added with audible self-loathing: "God, what an idiot I am."

A chill ran down Valjean's back.

"You don't mean to say he asked for..."

He couldn't bring himself to complete the sentence; he barely dared to complete the thought. It threatened to turn him inside out.

Javert stiffened, then sighed:

"Don't trouble yourself with it. It is quite enough that I will have to trouble myself with it."

"And you intend to honor this agreement?"

Javert aimed at Valjean a gaze so full of scorn that Valjean shrank back into his seat. "I always honor my agreements," he said.

"There are some things in life that should not be suffered!"

Javert lifted an eyebrow. "You seem quite certain that you know exactly what I agreed to."

"I'm not entirely an innocent and a simpleton, you know. I didn't spend two decades in the _bagne_ to be ignorant of these things! It was plenty obvious what that...  _person_  was all about!"

"Oh? Very well then. Then what do you suggest I do?"

"If you won't renege, then I don't know what else to suggest. How could you have brought yourself to agree to such a monstrous thing?"

"Easily. I wanted to save my brother. Would you have agreed for your daughter?"

It was a heavy blow, but Valjean withstood it.

"I would have agreed to anything for Cosette, but making good on the promise? never!"

"I see. So are your promises to me equally worthless?"

"Of course not!"

"Why not?"

"Because I made them to a good and honorable man!" exclaimed Valjean. "Not some scheming sodomite!"

Valjean had never cared one way or another for men who lay with men. Their activities at the galleys neither repulsed nor captivated him, but simply blended into the general dreary landscape that was the galleys. But the idea of that particular man touching Javert with lust made him see red.

I should have throttled him, thought Valjean suddenly, clenching his fists.

To his surprise, Javert began to shake with his peculiar silent laugh.

"You seem to hold those two categories for polar opposites," he said finally.

"You mean to tell me you don't, given what he asked of you?"

"No more than I hold all red-headed men to be scoundrels simply because one redhead I know is a scoundrel."

"I can't believe you are defending him!"

"And I can't believe a man with such a good head for business can be so void of logic. You must drive your accountants crazy."

Valjean fell silent again, shaking his head. He knew that such things happened, of course - Fantine had sold herself for her daughter's welfare, and her case was hardly unique. But what on earth could make Javert think that it was more dishonorable to break his word than resort to... to...

"Do you think he'd take money instead?" asked Valjean.

Javert offered no response but Valjean thought he saw him bite his lower lip.

The carriage rolled onto Rue Saint-Jacques. Ahead, the Seine glimmered in the moonlight. When the carriage stopped in the middle of a relatively wide street Valjean guessed to be Rue Planche-Mibray, Javert said with poorly hidden amusement:

"I suppose it would be bad form to keep you in further ignorance: you guessed incorrectly."

"About what?"

"About the terms of my agreement."

Valjean's mouth fell open.

"A part of me almost admires the capacity of your imagination," continued Javert conversationally. "The rest of me - the very substantial rest - is quite aghast. _Pardieu!_ Those still waters of yours could sail a fleet of frigates."

Some movement returned to Valjean's frozen facial muscles. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you have been letting me shoot my mouth off for nothing?"

"Oh, I would not call it nothing." Javert smirked. "I would call it one of the most entertaining cab-ride conversations I've ever had the pleasure of holding."

With that uncharacteristic verbal flourish, Javert opened the door and got out of the cab.

"I won't be long. Do not follow me," he warned and shut the door firmly.


	21. Chapter 21

Throwing one last brief glance back at the parked carriage and confirming to his satisfaction that the shutters over the passenger windows had been lowered, Javert rapped thrice on the door with his knuckles.

A shuffle soon made itself heard on the other side. The peephole glowed briefly with a soft orange light, then darkened again beneath a black eye.

"Who comes at this hour?" groused an old woman's voice. "What do you want?"

"Mother Cibot, let me in for a drink of water - I'm so famished that I've got no place to spend the night," replied Javert with a smile.

Several bolts slid out of their sockets, and the door was opened by a hunch-backed crone well on the other side of eighty. One of her withered hands grasped closed the shawl bundled around her frail throat; the other held high a minutely trembling saucer with a dripping candle stub.

"Took your time, you did, monsieur Javert," she grumbled in way of greeting, standing aside to let Javert through.

"Busy day, Mother Cibot," said Javert, quitting his cap and inclining his head as he stepped over the raised threshold. "Is Bernard up?"

"Still up, still at his desk... Go on up to him. But don't you two dally until dawn like last time!"

The last admonition was spoken already to Javert's back as he took the stairs to the second story, trailing his fingers along the wall in search of the door handle he knew to be there. All of a sudden he found himself lurching forward into nothingness as the door was jerked open from within. A scant moment later, a small dense head butted him in the stomach and almost knocked the wind out of him.

"Whoa!" exhaled Javert, grasping a curly head by the ears. " _Dame!_ Jacques, don't run on the stairs!"

"M'sieur Javert!" squeaked the head and buried itself once again in Javert's stomach, this time with affectionate intent.

"How are you, soldier?" murmured Javert patting the boy on the curly head awkwardly. "And where are you headed at such a speed?"

"The water-closet," admitted the boy sheepishly.

Javert nodded with a solemn face.

"March on, then. I'll find you afterwards."

At the other side of the corridor, Javert ascended yet another staircase, this time a spiral one. The door to the office was propped ajar by a bronze doorstop and the office itself illuminated with two small desk lamps. Bernard seemed to be getting his money's worth out of the midnight oil being burned - Javert heard the rapid scratching of his pen already from the anteroom.

Upon seeing him, Bernard moved to stand and greet him, but Javert raised his hand in warning and Bernard's hand, which had been reaching for the cane propped up against the mahogany desk, stilled on the desk.

"You had me worried, monsieur," said Bernard after Javert took his usual seat in the armchair near the window.

"There was a minor altercation," said Javert. "But it is of no matter. How's your leg?" he added, remembering his manners.

"Foretelling rain, but otherwise no worse than usual - much obliged for your asking. Have you seen Jacques yet?"

"I ran into him on the stairs, but he was rushing to the loo."

"You know, I do not like to stick my nose into secret police affairs, but that boy has been walking up walls ever since he came home," said Bernard. "He is bursting with news of some sort."

"That is good," said Javert, quelling a surge of disquiet in his stomach. "News is just what I'm after. He's a brave and capable boy, your Jacques."

Bernard flushed with pride but waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, don't let him hear you talk so, monsieur. I've had my hands full with him as of late! He can hardly keep his mind off adventures and conspiracies, to the neglect of both school work and his catechism. Father Bordin is becoming rather cross with him."

"This should be the last time I trouble you both," said Javert. "With respect to this affair, anyway. But do dissuade him from this 'adventures' business. The police is no place for a good boy who can read Latin."

"I would not keep him from it if he insisted," said Bernard kindly. "It's pointless to slander your profession to a man who profited so much by it, monsieur. It is a vocation no less honorable than priesthood. The call to protect the innocent can be louder than the one to pray for the guilty."

"To protect the innocent..." Javert stretched out his legs languidly. "You know, we had a fellow turn up at the Prefecture a while ago. Perfectly tailored coat, gold watch chain; a private carriage with a coat of arms dropped him off at the door. And this clearly titled and moneyed specimen - a young man, to be sure, but old enough to have legal freedom with respect to his person and property - demanded to be taken on as an agent! The secretary was stunned. 'What? monsieur  _wants_  this job?' Apparently, the milksop had read Vidocq's memoirs and was overcome with visions of daring rescues and clever interrogation tricks. 'Why shouldn't I do this?' he asked himself. 'Phooey on public opinion; phooey on Papa's coffers; to the devil with Maman's matchmaking. I'm young and strong, without occupation, with money enough of my own. I hit an ace four times out of five at twenty paces; I can grapple with the best of them; I am fond of English boxing. Why seek glory on foreign battlefields when there are battlefields aplenty under our own windows? Is killing Berbers in Algeria nobler than apprehending murderers and house-breakers in Saint-Antoine?'"

"Perhaps that is exactly the kind of man that ought to join the profession," pointed out Bernard.

Javert half-shrugged. "He applied himself with enough vigor, it's true. Volunteered for everything. Drunk patrol? Here he is, use him. A domestic brawl? Here he comes to rescue Madame. Child crying in the street? Give a stern lecture to the cab-driver who crushed the child's cat and slap him with a fine. Even the hardest work can be good sport if you seek nothing from it except the experience. _Pardieu!_ I know a viscount who drives a cab some nights a week; you should see how proud he is of his commendation book."

"You disapprove of him?"

Javert snorted. "Of course I disapprove of him! It's folly. What is the use of a rich man taking a poor man's job? He wants to amuse himself; the poor man wants to eat."

"Perhaps he will set up a cab company in later days. Then this experience will serve him and his future employees well. Same with that young nobleman - time spent in the police will serve him well should he become a lawyer or a legislator. Is he still working?"

"Sadly, no," said Javert without particular sadness. "A few months into his new career, there was a night of sleet and biting wind; then another; then a third. Unaccustomed to such shabby treatment by the elements, the poor thing caught a cold, and his family promptly shipped him off to Baden-Baden to recuperate. So much for his vocation. Life can be unkind even to those with both ability and opportunity. I would spare Jacques this. To be a policeman is bad enough, but to be one in inclement weather is insult to injury. The very heavens spit on you."

"Ah, so that is why you exchanged places with me in my cell that night - to keep yourself out of the cold." Bernard smiled faintly. "How inconsiderate of you, to kick a condemned man out of his state-provided refuge and take his place therein." He sighed. "To this day I do not know what you were thinking."

"I knew you were innocent. There was nothing to think."

"No one else believed me."

"There was nothing to believe, either. There was proof. That bloody thumb-print exonerated you. I had seen it perfectly. None of your fingers bear that oval whorl pattern. You did not wield the knife. Your innocence was written in the slain man's blood. What was I supposed to do? I was the one who arrested you. Your death would have been on my conscience. I made my statement to the investigating magistrate about the knife, but by then the blood trace had been smudged away. Well! I wasn't going to become a murderer for his skepticism."

"How did you know they would exonerate you of conspiracy?"

Javert rose from the armchair.

"Well, I hoped, certainly," he said. "But what difference would it have made? Praise doesn't make a wrong into a right, and censure cannot turn a right into a wrong. I had exhausted my legal options. The man you really ought to thank is Vidocq. He's the one who found the real killer. All I did is buy us a few days."

"If you say so."

"I do say so." Javert stretched. "Right. I'm off to get the front-line dispatches from Jacques. Good night, Bernard."

"Good night, monsieur," said Bernard, but the door had already closed behind Javert.


	22. Chapter 22

Javert found Jacques downstairs by the kitchen. The boy was absorbed in the rather noisy business of trying to bounce a sou off the wall and have it land next to an oblong river-smoothed pebble.

"Practicing 'murmur' volleys?" asked Javert, carefully keeping his voice neutral.

Ambushed, Jacques quickly palmed the sou and jumped up. Had been any lighting in the dark stairwell beyond faint gaslight seeping in through the windows, Javert would've surely seen the tips of the boy's ears redden.

"It's only with a single coin," mumbled Jacques defensively.

"And will it remain a single coin tomorrow, or will a companion coin join it?"

Jacques lowered his head a bit. Javert sat down onto the wide bottom stair, positioning himself closer to Jacques' eye-level.

"What's the big deal? It's just a few sous. And I almost don't ever lose any money – I'm good! I won three sous off Michel yesterday!" boasted Jacques.

"And what does your father think of this?" pressed Javert, sensing the boy's defensiveness. "Your grandmother?"

Jacques said nothing.

"You don't boast to them of these victories, do you?"

"No," said Jacques quietly.

"Why not?" Javert sounded more curious than judgmental.

Jacques pushed the pebble around with his toe and said nothing.

"Tell me Jacques: is your father a good man?"

"'Course he is!" exclaimed Jacques.

"So why are you doing things that you know would earn you your good father's disapproval?"

"I… it's just a bit of fun," said Jacques stubbornly.

"I'm sure it is. But what about two years from now? Will you always be playing for sous? You're nine now. How long before sous will seem like baby stuff, and you'll be playing for francs instead? And what about the day when bouncing coins off the wall will seem altogether silly, and you'll find yourself seated at a dice table instead? Or a card table? What then?"

Jacques stared stubbornly at his toe. "Will you tell Papa?" he asked anxiously.

"I won't, but  _you_  should."

"But he'll thrash me!"

Javert looked at the boy pointedly. Jacques heaved a sigh and kicked the pebble into the corner.

"All right, no more sermons," said Javert. "You're old enough to know right from wrong without my meddling. How were things in Palais Royal today? Did you go alone?"

"No, that would have been suspicious," said Jacques with perfect seriousness. "I enticed the whole gang to come. There was Michel, and Pierre, and the Lyonnais, and Daniel came and he dragged his little brother along, too, although we told him that we shan't be playing baby games…"

"What did you play?"

"'Guards and Cossacks,' of course! Michel brought some real bullets, he said he got them from a medical brother in the big hospital! They were heavy and flat, and he said they'd been taken from real soldiers' arms and legs after they'd been sawed off! It was wicked!"

"How exciting," said Javert sourly, suppressing a brief flash of disquieting memories. "And your assignment? Were the men easy to find?"

"Same as always," said Jacques with a business-like gravity so reminiscent of his father that Javert couldn't suppress a smile. "I know their figures by now, even if they change wigs or clothes. One of them hid behind a newspaper the whole time."

"Was that the big man or one of the smaller ones?" asked Javert, though he already knew the answer.

"The smallest of the bunch. But he reads most always. And the real big one just gobbled stew the whole time, and then drank wine and picked his nose, so he was boring too. But one of them was real strange this time!"

"How so?" asked Javert with false calmness.

"Well, for starters, he still had those bandages all over his face. And last time, some gentleman had asked him what had happened, and he'd said that he'd gotten burned. I thought then: that must have been some burn - he's been bandaged for months now! Well, today one of the nannies asked him about it, and he didn't say anything, but his friend with the newspaper told her there was an  _absence_  in his mouth, and that his teeth hurt a lot."

"An abscess, perhaps?"

"Maybe that, I don't know. So not a burn, then. I'm thinking - maybe not an  _absence_ either?"

Javert stuck out his lower lip slightly and nodded minutely in approval.

"Oh, and he was wearing this wide-brimmed hat and a long coat with a cape although there was barely a cloud in the sky. But that's not the so strange part. See, today he was sitting there with this very little notebook open, and he kept scribbling in it with a pencil! And then, do you know what he'd do then?"

Javert slowly shook his head no.

"He'd burn the paper! I swear, he must've burned up half his little book that way! He had the waiter bring out a bowl for him with a couple of live coals in it, and he'd scribble and scribble something for a full half an hour and then crumble the bit and toss it into the bowl, and it'd go up in flames!"

"What was he scribbling? Did you get a look?"

"I did!" Jacques was fairly hopping with excitement. "See, I wanted to get closer to them, but didn't have an excuse, right. So I said a prayer to Our Lady and guess what? Michel and I were pretend-dueling, and I lunged, and he parried, and he knocked my sabre clean out of my hand, and it flew right under their table! That was Our Lady answering my prayers, to be sure, 'cause Michel is usually crap with swords, he can barely parry  _at all!_  So I went up to them, bowed and asked for it back, and the bandaged man picked it up and handed it to me. He also said a little rhyme to me, which I thought was dead stupid."

"What sort of rhyme?" Javert asked.

"Something about how a little soldier will grow up to replace a big one. I don't remember. It was silly. Rhymes are for babies."

"I see. So what was he writing?"

"Just doodles," said Jacques shrugging. "Hearts, flowers, a puppy dog, arrows. Just pages and pages of doodles. All of them burned. But then they were getting up to leave, see, - and a lot earlier today, too! Usually the gendarmes come around to kick us out as soon as the gas lamps are lit, right? And then I'd wait around somewhere where I can spy them through the fence, until they leave. Well! This time we were being turned out, and they rose to leave, too! I made sure to drop the all the bullets on the ground and stay long enough gathering them to mark the gate they left from."

Jacques finally took a breath, then forged on at double speed:

"But that's not the thing! The thing is, I watched him as he rose, and he was crumpling up that last doodle, but he was sneaky, right? I saw him tear two pages out of the notebook instead of one, and he crumpled up one of them and burned it in the bowl, but the page with the doodles he kept in his hand! And when they were walking out the gate, he tossed it into the thorny bushes by the fence! The others didn't suspect a thing! Then after they went out, I climbed right in and got it!"

And Jacques pulled from his trouser pocket a little ball of crumpled paper, holding it up to Javert triumphantly.

Javert took it. "Thorny bushes, you say? Go on, pull up those sleeves."

Jacques pulled up his right sleeve, baring rows of acacia-inflicted war wounds. Javert nodded with respect.

"To suffer for the sake of the peace and security of your country is a brave and noble thing, and to do so in silence is nobler still. Nevertheless, you should have your grandma put some iodine tincture on that."

Jacques' shoulders drooped under the bunched up little jacket.

"Iodine stings," he grumbled under his breath.

Javert lifted a questioning eyebrow and gave the boy a light tap on the shoulder.

"A soldier like you, a master of recognizance in enemy territory, and afraid of a little iodine? Nonsense. Go on, your grandmother is still up. Tell her to doctor your wounds and that I said good night."

"And you, m'sieur?"

"I think I'm going to head out the other way. It's not locked yet, is it?"

"No, grandma always locks it right before going to bed."

"Then I'll be off now. And you - you did great today. I'm proud of you."


	23. Chapter 23

Valjean was beginning to doze, his head lolling back on the neck pillow upholstered in shabby and slightly grimy Utrecht velvet, when the carriage was suddenly rocked violently side to side. Valjean's eyes flew open and beheld Javert lowering himself by his hands from the carriage roof into the open door and swinging inside feet first, like a highway robber. Momentum propelled him almost into Valjean's lap.

"Time to go home," said Javert and scooted away.

Valjean goggled.

"Did you jump down from a window?"

"What of it?"

"Good Lord! why not come in through the door?"

Javert leaned back and folded his hands gingerly behind his head. "I thought to surprise and astonish you with my athletic prowess," he muttered sarcastically.

The driver cracked his whip and started the nag slowly down the street.

"Haven't I once heard you say that climbing out of windows was unhealthy?" asked Valjean.

Javert turned his head and stared at him. Three gas lights reflected in his unevenly colored eyes before Valjean got his reply:

"Climbing out of windows is unhealthy when one is confronted by armed policemen."

"Oh! but only then?"

Javert cradled the back of his head once more in his palms and closed his eyes. A few further gas lights on, he sighed.

"The portress of that building owns a dyspeptic but surprisingly vigilant guard bitch. I've introduced myself to her numerous times, but somehow it never took. I heard her claws clap-clapping on the ground floor as I was heading out, so I decided not to chance her taking me for a robber and waking the entire street. Instead I went out the first floor through a very convenient window right above where we parked. Does this satisfy?"

"In full."

"Good."

Some time passed before Valjean decided to speak up again.

"Have you gotten what you came for, then?"

Javert nodded but stayed silent. The wide street they were rolling down was generously lit, and each gas light they passed threw into sharp relief the sickly peaks and hollows of his gaunt face.

"You don't look good," said Valjean quietly.

"That's all right. You'll get used to it," said Javert with false cheer. "And love will surely follow habit."

"Will you need my help getting to your floor?" said Valjean, ignoring the jibe.

Javert winced and clutched his hands tighter around the back of his head.

"Most probably," he admitted in softer tone.

"How far away are we?"

"Next turn, then five doors down. Won't take long. Third floor. Ah..."

Javert folded his elbows in around his ears and bent forward.

"All right?" Valjean bent over him solicitously.

"No." Javert burst out with a high-pitched little exhalation of a laugh that seemed to come entirely from his mouth and not from his lungs. "Too bright," he murmured, collapsing even further forward, until his forehead was practically on his knees. "Too damn bright…"

Someone knocked on the carriage window on Javert's side. Only then did Valjean realize that they had come to a stop. Reaching over Javert's hunched back, he parted the curtain, expecting to see the face of the dismounted driver but saw instead Vidocq's unsmiling profile. The ex-chief of Parisian secret police was arguing with the driver, grasping the door handle with one hand and gesticulating freely with the other. Upon catching Valjean's eye, he threw open the door.

"How's the patient?" he asked.


	24. Chapter 24

The patient was clearly unwell. Javert's eyes were unfocused. His mouth hung half-open, corners sagging and collecting drool. This, along with the deepened creases under his cheeks, made him resemble, to Valjean's pitying eyes, one of the prematurely decrepit cretins that one occasionally saw scavenging in the rubbish heaps for rags and bits of leather.

"Checked out," summed up Vidocq and grabbed Javert unceremoniously under the knees. "Come, let's have him up. Take him under the arms. One, two, three, lift!.."

They extracted Javert from the carriage with care – greater on Valjean's side than on Vidocq's, since Valjean supported the head.

"Can you brace him?" asked Vidocq. Valjean nodded. The inspector made an apparent attempt to regain his feet but only shuffled feebly against the unclean pavement. Valjean clasped him firmer to his chest.

"If we set him down here on the ground, he'll give me hell later about the clothes," murmured Vidocq as he patted Javert down for the latchkey. "Never get him started on that if you can help it. He'll yammer for half an hour about how the public doesn't need any more bloody freedoms, just more public latrines."

When the front door was propped open by a stop, they resumed their respective positions and carried the inspector inside, head first.

"He lives in 3E," said Vidocq as they turned to go up the stairs. "Come, set him down. Here's the key, go open up the flat; it's the second door down the hallway to your left as you come up."

The key turned with barely a sound in the well-oiled lock, and Valjean was inside.

Javert's apartment was cool and surprisingly spacious. There was little furniture to grab the eye. By the door stood a tall stand combining a galoshes tree, a hat rack, and an umbrella holder. To Valjean's somewhat less immediate right, several knot-edged carpet runners lined the floor, as if designating a pathway to something his eyes could not discern in the dark. Dead ahead was a heavily curtained window, or perhaps a balcony door – the dark drapes hung from the ceiling and reached all the way to the floor.

Valjean pushed the door to the apartment open, letting it bump the wall behind it with a slight echo. Propping the door ajar with the heavy hat-galosh-and-umbrella stand, he headed back downstairs.

While he was gone, Vidocq had shifted to dragging Javert up on his back, and they were already on the second landing. Vidocq was audibly out of breath.

"Had I known... that I would be hauling your carcass... up to your flat... that often... I'd have never let you take... the damn flat. You'd've been living in the dormitory... just like everyone else. One flight of stairs... from street to bed."

Valjean resumed his position, putting his hands under Javert's arms. His touch seemed to startle the man into a semblance of wakefulness.

"L't go…" muttered Javert. His abdomen tightened as his hand pushed against the whitewashed wall in a vain attempt to stand up. Valjean adjusted his grip around Javert's chest and whispered:

"It's alright. We'll get you home. Don't strain to help."

Javert mumbled something indiscernible, as if in his sleep, and then suddenly spoke in a voice so lucid that Valjean started:

"'Gene?"

"Oh, so you're awake then?" said Vidocq without much enthusiasm. "Good, stay that way."

"Where's Isaac?"

Vidocq paused in the stairwell, forcing Valjean to stop as well, put Javert's legs down and peered into his eyes. Whatever he saw there did not seem to reassure him; he picked up the legs again and nodded to Valjean to proceed.

"Aren't you going to answer him?"

"No."

"Why not? He's awake."

"No, he isn't."

"He asked you a question."

"There are questions, and there are questions," said Vidocq gloomily. "Come on, we're almost there."

"Where is Isaac?" repeated Javert insistently.

"Not here," grunted Vidocq.

"Where then?"

"Far, far away. Now be quiet."

"Why?" asked Javert with almost childish petulance.

"Because if he were here, he'd want you to be quiet."

The argument must've been convincing enough; the rest of the way to Javert's apartment was traveled in silence.

Inside, the carpet runners on the floor turned out to lead to a low and tremendously long bed made with military precision. Valjean reached to pull down the covers, but Vidocq shook his head, and Javert's body was dumped unceremoniously right on top of the quilt.

"How often does this happen to him?" asked Valjean while Vidocq lit two candles.

"Not often lately. Something must have set him off." Vidocq's eyes flicked to Valjean's. "Sit with him while I put tea on. If he starts seizing or raving, call out."

Vidocq picked up one of the candles and headed to the kitchen.

"Who is Isaac?" asked Valjean.

Vidocq waved his hand dismissively without turning around.


	25. Chapter 25

Valjean looked out the window. The cab was gone. He wondered whether the driver ever got paid. Maybe he thought that he had witnessed a murder and decided to forgo collecting his fare, thought Valjean, eager to make himself scarce before the assassins turned their attention to him, the sole witness to their crime. Or maybe the cabbie was an old hand at all this, and the Surete had some sort of an arrangement with him concerning payment. A retainer and government oats at discount, or some such.

Vidocq returned from the kitchen with a moist waffle-weave towel which he spread carefully over Javert's forehead.

"'S dirty," mumbled Javert barely parting his lips.

"The moisture will do you good," said Vidocq. "How are you?"

"Better," asserted Javert's mouth. The rest of him, however, remained as still and lifeless as a corpse laid out to be waked.

Vidocq began to help Javert out of his boots and jacket. "What am I to do about you, my turtle-dove?" he murmured with annoyance as he did so. "I just know you'll be up and running around like a headless chicken as soon as I leave. Perhaps I'll just have your new fellow-friend tie you to the bed," he added, nodding towards Valjean.

Javert said nothing. His eyelashes no longer fluttered, and he appeared to be falling into a slumber.

"Come, come, you old faker. Say something."

"What do you want me to say? I'm not one for useless reassurances. We both know I'll be out of here as soon as my head clears."

"And if it doesn't?"

"It will. It always does."

"Why won't you just go to sleep and leave the whole thing to me?"

"Would you sleep if it were one of yours in a pickle like this? Your wife?"

"Yes!"

"Oh? how about Annette? Would you have left her rescue up to someone else?"

There was a pause. Javert remained motionless and with his eyes closed. "Exactly," he said after several seconds of silence.

"I can give you a direct order."

"Not anymore you can't."

"I'll think of a way." Vidocq rose from the bed, took Javert's bunch of keys off the night-table, and left the apartment, shutting the door softly behind him.

One had to admit that Vidocq knew his agent well: his footsteps were still resounding in the hallway when Javert pulled the folded towel off his forehead and attempted to swing his legs off the bed. This time, Valjean didn't bother making a fuss. Instead of trying to effect restraint, he simply sat on the bed and pinned Javert's legs with his weight.

"Nice trick," wheezed Javert after several jerking attempts at freeing himself. "Effective to the utmost. I've known oxen who weighed less than you."

"You're not going anywhere," said Valjean in a tone that he hoped carried enough authority to cut off all further discussion.

"Fine!" Javert relaxed and sank back onto the coverlet. "Just give me my jacket back."

"Are you cold?" asked Valjean solicitously.

" _Dame!_ just hand it over. I already promised I won't try to leave. A fine day it is when a police agent is put under house arrest by two convicts!" griped Javert as he accepted the jacket and searched its pockets. "Thank you," he said, palming his find and flinging the jacket back at Valjean, who went to hang it on a hook by the door. "Well, since I'm not allowed up, you should go get that."

"Get what?" asked Valjean and then realized something was hissing in the kitchen.

"Tea leaves are in the red tin, first shelf of the cupboard," said Javert. "Give the tea pot two scalding rinses first. And since you won't let me up to do for myself, take the oilcan and light the lamp after that."

Once the hydrostatic lamp was lit, Valjean looked over the room more thoroughly. Its furnishings were somewhat eccentric. The chair he had been sitting in was old, its faded cornflower blue upholstery fraying at the seams. Javert's bed was large - a married couple's bed; the night table of rough pine was ugly but sturdy; and what Valjean had taken for a second writing-desk in the darkness turned out to be a coquette's dressing-table, with many drawers and a tall upright wood panel in the center that presumably concealed a mirror. This table was all the more puzzling because it showed obvious signs of frequent use: its surface was crowded with little jars, boxes, combs, and other toiletry articles, and a rag hanged off one of the corners of the wood panel. There was no bookcase, but two wide bordered shelves ran along the wall above the bed, the lower one stacked with bound-up papers and the upper one with volumes of law codes and, somewhat surprisingly, old medical books and journals. By the door, a coat-stand hosted a single greatcoat; an umbrella-stand held a single umbrella; and the shoe-stand housed one spare pair of street shoes.

Puzzlingly, the apartment seemed to consist only of the kitchen and the one large room where they were situated. However, the new light allowed Valjean to discern that the table was pushed up against a door, but one so long in disuse that it was almost concealed from sight by several coats of paint. This led one to think that the apartment had once been larger.

Thinking of all this - the strange furnishings, the peculiar lay-out, the meticulously cleanliness of the place, and the general gloominess of the neighborhood – Valjean for once had to agree with the modern writers: you are where you live.


	26. Chapter 26

Vidocq returned with several envelopes. "Your concierge is a ninny. Her door was wide open."

"Well? does anyone still love me now that I'm dead?" asked Javert.

"The public prosecutor loves you," said Vidocq. "Or rather, he loves a certain Monsieur Daumont."

"Oh,  _hell_. Please tell me this isn't another deposition summons." Javert slit the envelope with a long thumbnail. "Lovely. Another deposition summons. And for a rebel, no less. Not with respect to that business, mind you. This one got into a bar brawl. Yes. I recall him. A bumpkin from Congourde d'Aix. A mason's apprentice. I am told he got out of that mouse-trap of a house in Rue de la Chanvrerie during the last assault by jumping very luckily from the second story window."

"Why are they only bringing suit against him now?" asked Valjean.

"Well, he only got well enough to get into a bar brawl now," shrugged Javert as he read.

"A couple of bullets grazed him as he ran for safety," said Vidocq, tucking his thumbs behind his suspenders. "His elderly auntie had been nursing him back to health for the last month. Eventually he ventured out of the house for some spiritual sustenance, as it were, and was recognized by a soldier on patrol while getting sloshed in the wine-shop across the street from his aunt's tenement."

"Who was getting sloshed, the man or the soldier?" asked Valjean, confused.

"Both," grumbled Javert. "A serendipitous meeting of two derelicts. There were accusations, then counter-accusations; then there were blows; the fellow's wounds got re-opened; the soldier got a bottle broken over his head – and more along these lines. In the bar itself, a number of articles broken, some crockery smashed, and the cashier's frock stained beyond her laundry-woman's capabilities. The usual stuff."

"So what do they want from you?"

"Oh, to take a good look at the arrested fellow... inform the Crown whether he had or had not been on the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade. And therefore whether the soldier had or had not been entitled to calling him a… what was it?.." – Javert brought the paper closer to his eyes - "…a 'treacherous swine', and sticking him in the ribs with the butt of his rifle. Idiots."

"Who?"

"The whole lot of them. Why should that make the slightest bit of difference? No one's entitled to blows from a patrolman unless they're resisting arrest. And there was nothing to arrest him for until he started resisting the arrest," said Javert and flipped a sheet. "Good of them to remember not to address this to Monsieur Javert.. who is Milaud's secretary anymore? Never mind, it'll come to me. Did you remind him?"

"No, he recalled all on his own, bless him," said Vidocq. "That's why he didn't send it officially – see?" Vidocq leaned over and poked his finger into something on the page Javert was reading. "No stamp – he probably just pulled a clean one from the stack. And the Prefect's signature releasing you to his authority isn't on it. So this is just a friendly invitation."

Javert put the summons back into the envelope. "And the rest of it?"

"An advertising circular for stationary and a Jerusalem letter."

"How do you know it's a Jerusalem letter?" Javert picked up an envelope and examined its return address with some curiosity.

"I got one from this post-office box a couple of days ago. Bet you a louis it'll be from Mistress Poiret, an indigent milliner recently widowed, in debt from her late husband's gambling habit, with three hungry ankle-biters underfoot and a babe at each breast, the poor,  _poor_  woman. Mind you, the letter itself will reek of the cheapest, foulest tobacco."

Javert slit that envelope with his nail as well and sniffed. "Ye-ees, that's the one. Bah! That's no Jerusalem letter; it's just plain begging." He tucked the letter back into the opened envelope and dropped it the other side of the bed.

"May I?" asked Valjean.

"Be my guest," said Javert absently, closing his eyes.

Valjean pulled out the false 'Jerusalem letter' and perused it silently. He was feeling uneasy. The letter was bringing back not only unhappy memories of the Jondrette fiasco but also even more unhappy memories of another kind. Many years ago in Toulon, a cell-mate of his often busied himself in the evenings with letter-writing and sometimes recruited Valjean to copy them, for a sou or half a ration of bread. Valjean had been learning writing from the Ignorantin brothers and was glad to practice his calligraphy. As reading was still not coming easy to him and drawing the letters neatly took a lot of concentration, he hardly paid any mind to the words he was copying diligently onto the pages. Now, over twenty years later, it was starting to look like he had been unwittingly involved in yet another criminal scheme, and the thought nauseated him.

"Why are they called 'Jerusalem letters'?" he wondered finally.

Javert opened his eyes again and scratched at the back of his head. "Hmm. That is a puzzle. M'sieur Vidocq, you're the expert on thief lore: why are they called Jerusalem letters? From Rue de Jerusalem? As in, 'Get caught writing this and you'll end up in the Prefecture'?"

"No, it's left over from the days when Crusaders figured into them. The usual run of a letter like this fifty or so years ago went as this: 'To most honored Monsieur or Madame Such-and-such; I am the last scion of an ancient family, writing to you out of a wretched furnished lodging in Saint-Marcel, brought thither by the cruel machinations of Marquis Bugbear and Baron Blockhead, but never mind all that. The crux of the matter is that having been forced from my family estate in Bretagne or Auvergne or Provence or wherever else with such haste, I was not afforded opportunity to take with me the ancient artifacts brought to France by my illustrious ancestor Sire Iron-trousers upon his return from the Jerusalem crusades. Being the last of my family, I alone possess the knowledge of where the map to the buried Jerusalem treasure is hidden, but circumstances beyond my control compel me now to seek out help in reclaiming it, and as you had been recommended to me by close and trusted advisers as a person of both sharp intelligence and compassionate heart…' - et cetera, et cetera. You get the gist. The supplicant then asks the addressee to render them a minor pecuniary assistance – no more than several  _pistoles_  at first - so that they may return to their native parts, put in an appearance at their family estate, find the map in their father's library or their scullery-maid's corset or wherever it had been stashed, and dig up the treasure, which they would then  _naturally_ …"

" _Naturally,_ " echoed Javert with a shark's smile.

"… _naturally_  share with Monsieur or Madame in boundless and eternal gratitude. If the target is a big enough dupe, he or she will send out the forty or fifty francs asked of them and eagerly await further news. The supplicant might then post as many or as few letters as they please, either from Paris or the location described in the letter, relating their adventures and misadventures in search of the missing family fortune, and always asking for more money to finance the operations. This goes on until the target finally realizes that he's posted out a thousand francs already, that it's already been six months, that there seems to be no progress being made, and that it looks like their spouse was right about this affair all along. They stop sending money, and that's where things end. Usually, there is no complaint made to the police. Although I have to say," – Vidocq turned to Javert – " _we_ 've gotten a few over the years."

"Not too many, but yeah, certainly more than the police proper. They certainly didn't want to go on record. Anyway, these letters got far more diverse and interesting after the Revolution. Vidocq and I have a whole collection of them," said Javert.

"What are some of the variants?" asked Valjean.

"Well, there's the standard émigré pitch: family castle stormed by Revolutionaries and a mob with pitchforks, relatives slaughtered, only survivor by grace of God now addressing you – and so on, and so forth. Those reached their peak of popularity around the mass returns of exiles in 1815. The newspapers stoked the fire by occasionally printing stories of some good Samaritan rendering aid to an indigent seamstress in Brussels or Geneva and then having it sprung upon them that their protégée is actually an heiress."

Valjean bit the inside of his cheek.

"And then there's the Cossack variant," said Javert. "That was quite a popular one until as far as maybe ten years ago. Someone supposedly buried a pile of valuable papers and jewels under their turnip beds for fear of Paris being ransacked by Cossacks, then got struck by apoplexy, leaving no legal heirs to the property, and the letter-writer professes to know where the goods are hidden. All he needs is the money to buy the house, which is always described as a worthless shack, and the adjoining meager plot of land where the treasure lies."

"Do people fall often for such stories?" asked Valjean.

"Not often, but often enough."

"The key here is numbers," said Vidocq didactically. "The letters are sent out in mass. All you need is for one out of twenty to bite, and you've already got a handsome profit."

"I see," murmured Valjean.

"Why, grandma, what bright red ears you have," remarked Javert with a smirk.

Valjean said nothing but lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. If he was to be with the police from now on instead of against it, being thought a one-time chump far outweighed acquiring yet another blotch on an already stained record.

Vidocq laughed.

"Ho-ho! What's this then? Don't tell me you actually fell for one of these?"

"Oh, cut the man some slack," said Javert, aligning the edges of the opened letters carefully on top of the torn envelopes beside him. "Everyone falls for some sort of a scheme at least once in their life."

"True enough," acceded Vidocq easily. "I've certainly been duped plenty of times. _Pardieu_ , to think of all the ways I've been had in my youth! the mind boggles. Took me years to wise up. So Pharaoh's right, don't feel bad. No one escapes being made a fool somehow. Except this one, of course." Vidocq clapped Javert lightly on the shoulder.

Javert smiled weakly and closed his eyes. "Me, ah!.. I have been the biggest fool of all," he said mysteriously.

"There's a new species making its way around these days," said Vidocq. "A sort of return to the 'heathen gold' theme, but now with a Mohammedan instead of Mosaic motif. The customer is asked to direct their footsteps to Algeria and purchase a frontier homestead for a pittance. There's usually some story about hidden Bedouin gold attached. The industry clearly languishes without a major European campaign."

"Well, that won't last," said Javert softly. "God, how tired I am," he added.

"Good. Stay that way and get some sleep."

"Not that kind of tired... Bone-weary. I haven't felt this weary in ages."

"You haven't slept more than five hours a night in ages."

Javert inclined his eyelashes once in a minute nod, then muttered:

"When Isaac gets here, tell him not to bother with a cold compress. It doesn't really help anyway, only wets my hair. Tell him to just sit by me. That's all I want."


	27. Chapter 27

Vidocq swore under his breath.

"Who is this Isaac he keeps calling?" asked Valjean.

"His doctor," answered Vidocq curtly. "Who will not be putting in an appearance today, on account of being dead."

"Dead?! Does Javert know?"

"One should think so. It happened thirteen years ago." Vidocq lifted one of Javert's eyelids. Javert did not stir. "He just forgets sometimes. Can't help himself. It's like with soldiers who get their legs blown off by cannons and then complain of pain in their toes for the rest of their lives. Every time he floats off like this he starts thinking Isaac is running late."

Suddenly, Javert grasped Vidocq weakly by the sleeve. "Hey," he exhaled quietly.

"Hey yourself," said Vidocq.

"Something… something I wanted to ask you. Do you still have the room description?"

Apparently, this was the shibboleth Vidocq had been waiting for. Within the blink of an eye, he was leaning over Javert from behind, holding a sheet of paper in front of both of them.

"Want me to read it?" asked Vidocq.

"Not all of it. Read…" Javert frowned. "Read the body description. Something… something was off about it."

"'The body of the widow Montpellier,'" began Vidocq, "'lies supine, with the right hand almost touching the overturned chair and the legs stretched out towards the door of the dining room…'"

"That," said Javert. "Supine. Why?"

Vidocq listened.

"Why supine?" repeated Javert. "She had been hit in the back of the head with a club. She should've fallen forward."

"She might have turned over," said Vidocq without conviction. One does not easily turn over from a deadly blow to the back of the head.

"But the coroner ruled instantaneous. It makes sense. So he must've been the one to turn her over. There was a smear of blood..." Javert raised a hand to his stubbled sunken-in cheek and made a tracing motion over it. "The threads of hair plastered facing towards the ear on the right side. Do you see?"

"I don't," said Vidocq.

"And the teeth!" continued Javert without taking notice. "She was toothless!"

Vidocq shrugged. "She was old."

"Yes, but you went through the kitchen, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Well?"

"Well what?" said Vidocq patiently.

"Do you remember the beefsteak?"

"The beefsteak?"

"It was in the larder."

"I didn't look in the larder."

"Well, I did. And I spoke to the cook."

"Yes, I was with you, remember? She was our first suspect."

"She said the old woman was stingy and suspicious. Went through the kitchen a lot. Counted things. Tallied expenses every day."

"So?"

"So, she wouldn't have overlooked the meat...!"

Javert attempted to speak further but broke off mid-word, whined like a dog with a bellyache and scrunched up under the coverlet.

There was a timid knock on the door. Vidocq went to answer, opening the door a few inches and conversing quietly with someone on the other side; then he closed it again and returned to Javert's bedside. However, it turned out that he was only returning for his hat.

"I must leave," he told Valjean with a sort of enraged helplessness. "Damnation! Look, if he says anything more about this in his delirium, write it down! Anything at all, you hear?"

He paused with his hat in his hand, then resolutely put it on, went into the kitchen and returned with another glass of water, which he cautiously fed to Javert in small sips, as he held him up by the shoulder. His desire to hear more on the subject of the murdered widow seemed to be outweighing the need to rush off.

"I want green tea," murmured Javert capriciously when the glass was empty.

"Green tea..." Vidocq snorted. "How's about some black caviar while we're at it?" He lowered Javert back onto the pillow. "You keep thinking about all this," he instructed. "Tell me when I come back in the morning."

There was another knock on the door, even more timid than the previous one. Vidocq gave Javert one last look, but the man did not seem disposed to dole out any more investigation pointers: he had turned on his side and curled in on himself, occasionally giving a full-body twitch under the blankets.

Vidocq raised his eyebrows at Valjean, extended a cautionary index finger at him like a schoolmaster, and was out the door before Valjean could ask him anything.


	28. Chapter 28

The apartment became quiet.

For a while, Valjean sat by Javert's bedside and meditated on the chock of unruly black hair sticking out from inside the cocoon of blankets. Sentimental thoughts flickered through his mind, thoughts of caterpillars and butterflies and the mysterious ways of the Lord... After a while, Valjean realized that he was no longer thinking of cabbage caterpillars but rather of cabbages themselves, and that he had grown quite hungry. He had only had a bite to eat in the tavern earlier, and a glance at his pocket watch told him that even that was three hours ago.

' _Tiens_ , only three hours,' thought Valjean with some doubt as he rose quietly from the desk chair. 'Felt more like three years.'

The investigation of the kitchen yielded little. The cupboards were as bare of food now as they had been when Valjean opened them in his earlier search for the tea leaves. In the first hanging cupboard, there were several tins with peeling red enamel: one with unsifted flour, one with some sort of ground herbs and one, to Valjean's surprise, filled to the brim with very fine sand. On the top shelf, there were some pewter plates, a couple of white coffee mugs dyed beige on the inside from heavy use, and two mismatched china tea cups without saucers. In the second cupboard, there was a straw basket with a few sunflower seeds and a dead cockroach and a large red ceramic bowl with a raised lid that locked firmly into place with a clasp, ostensibly to keep the foodstuffs safe from mice. Upon opening the contraption, Valjean discovered in it several stale biscuits and a browned, wilted quarter of an apple.

'Well!' thought Valjean, shutting the last door. 'No wonder he's as skinny as a rake.'

From the bed in the sitting room, as if in response to his thoughts, there came an unintelligible mumble. Valjean shut the kitchen door behind him and came up to Javert's bed.

"Did you say something?" he asked.

Javert rolled onto his back and repeated his mumble. It sounded like 'bomdjar'.

Valjean deliberated for a second whether Javert was speaking a foreign language or just mangling French. "Pardon?" he asked again.

"Bottmdrwer," said Javert, slightly louder and more distinctly this time, and turned resolutely back onto his side, concealing himself once more in the coverlet.

Valjean returned to the kitchen but the only drawer he found there was the cutlery drawer; that held a small assortment of spoons and forks, but nothing besides.

He had a sudden thought and came back out. "What am I looking for?" he asked Javert.

"Bottom drawer!" insisted Javert's muffled voice from his cocoon. And then, inexplicably: "As always."

Valjean looked around the room. The dressing-table in the corner had drawers, lots of them, but it was unlikely that Javert would keep food so close to poisonous cosmetic pastes and powders. (What Javert was doing with those, and in such quantities, was a subject Valjean did not feel prepared to undertake contemplating just yet.) There was also the desk.

Valjean looked at it indecisively. The bottom drawer was taller than the others, probably intended for large-format ledgers. Unlike the other drawers, it had a keyhole. The key was nowhere in sight. Thinking that Javert wouldn't have ordered him to look there if it were forbidden, Valjean tried it anyway. It slid open easily, revealing a large album bound in dyed blue leather. Unless Javert was in habit of keeping unleavened flat-breads between the pages, it was highly unlikely that the album contained anything nourishing. Beyond that, the drawer was empty.

'He must have been hallucinating again when he spoke to me,' decided Valjean. Now curious, he pulled out the album and flipped it open about one-third of the way.

The left page was blank.

The right page was devoted to a full-length, meticulously shaded pencil drawing of a flayed corpse.


	29. Chapter 29

Thoughts of snowballing horror and gruesomeness flashed through Valjean's head. Tearing his eyes away from the picture, he turned to Javert's bed. The inspector slept on, or seemed to, still facing away from Valjean and oblivious to his discovery.

The torn-up body seemed to have been depicted floating in water, its long hair billowing in finely stylized ripples. It was difficult to discern anything more than that.

With only a second's hesitation, Valjean picked up the hydrostatic lamp by Javert's bedside and set it carefully onto the desk.

By the light of the lamp, the ripples around the body transformed into uniform lines of dense writing. From the few words Valjean managed to make out, it was Latin. Despite his decade of service as gardener at the Petit-Picpus convent, Valjean knew very little of that language - one couldn't 'catch' Latin simply by living at a convent. But even if he had, the handwriting was almost irredeemably illegible.

Valjean frowned. From what he recalled of his days as mayor, Javert's handwriting was very different.

He flipped a page and came face to face with something elongated and ridged, like an extremely fat maggot, and somehow slimy-looking despite being rendered in crisp graphite. This time the writing around it was bordered by frames of varying thicknesses and emphasized with exclamation points and question marks.

'Ah,' thought Valjean with relief. 'An anatomy journal.'

The next ten or so minutes taught him a fair amount about the strength of his nerves and his stomach. General anatomy was followed by pathological anatomy, which the author's manifest artistic gift made nothing short of horrifying: a hellish assortment of cirrhotic livers, gaping wounds, lungs consumed by phthisis, shattered bones and gangrenous limbs covered about a hundred pages of the album. All pictures were meticulous, confidently executed, and clearly drawn from up-close and personal encounters. Valjean examined them all with the diligence of a medical student cramming for end-of-the-year exams. The only pages he elected to skip covered the obstetric cycle.

After the initial shock of the carnage wore off, the pictures started looking more beautiful than frightful - the glossy shading of the slick surfaces of internal organs, the graceful posing of the skeletons, the peaceful looks on the faces of the dead, beatific even with their insides excavated from their bodies.

Eventually, anatomy gave way to something called 'histology'. The word heading the new section was inscribed on the title sheet in French, in large and almost playfully shaded block letters. Histological illustrations proved to be much duller than anatomical ones: simple schematic outlines of internal organs, muscles, or bones surrounded by square "windows" diagramming the structure of healthy and variously damaged cells of the corresponding tissues. All diagrams were accompanied by the same cramped miniscule writing, which eventually supplanted diagrams altogether. Valjean had never seen so much hand-written text. Were it put into print, each page of the large-format journal would easily yield ten or so pages  _in quarto_.

And then, as if the author had exhausted himself, the writing stopped altogether, breaking off almost mid-line.

But there was life again in the next section, which resembled an architect's sketchbook: dual sheets, firm rag paper overlaid with translucent rice-paper, to allow for composite drawings. The pictures in this section were neither gory nor scientific. They were sketches of figures in motion, such as a fledgling artist might make while sitting in a sidewalk café. There were women here, in layers upon layers of lace and cloth instead of laid bare for all the world to gaze upon; construction workers in large-brimmed hats; grisettes rushing somewhere with boxes and packets and bourgeois promenaders. Some of the people were drawn as if observed from rather high up. It was unclear whether the author was abandoning medical illustration for fine arts or was simply honing his skills in between – or was after? – medical courses.

After a lovely sketch of gamins at play, the rice-paper of the next sheet bore a delicately shaded drawing suggesting a man in shirtsleeves asleep behind a table, his long-haired head in his folded arms. The sketch underneath was a rougher outline of the same, executed with excellent eye to position but without much detail. The next sketch showed the same man, still asleep but now with one of his arms stretched out towards the viewer at an angle that even a relative philistine like Valjean recognized as wonderfully ambitious: the man's fingertips almost seemed to be touching the paper from the inside. The page after that, however, marked a return to the earlier medical subjects. The same man now sat on a chair and smoked a pipe, long legs stretched out and crossed at ankles over a balcony rail. The rice paper overlaying him bore a detailed and intricate diagram of his brain, with many arrows leading away from the section near the ear and towards various blocks of penciled text at the margins.

Valjean turned the sheet of rice paper and instantly recognized a younger Javert. There was absolutely no mistaking that intense round-eyed gray stare from under the black eyebrows, or the frown stamped into his skin like a brand right above his nose. As usual, Javert seemed either deep in thought or vexed at something. Underneath the sketch, there was a title, not scribbled but written out with care: "Sascha".

Valjean was ready to flip over to the next page when he heard the bed creak. Mortified, he turned around. Javert was sitting upright in the bed and staring at him with the expression of resigned unhappiness.


	30. Chapter 30

"You're awake," said Valjean, surprised. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry…"

Javert rose slowly, took several shaky steps towards to table, and grasped its edge with both hands, leaning on it as if the small exertion sapped all his strength.

Now that he was on his feet, it was clear that he was not looking at Valjean at all but past him, carrying this fixed gaze before him like a blind man as he crossed the room. Javert's mouth opened and closed slightly, like it did back at the tavern. Every once in a while, his throat convulsed in a shallow swallowing motion. When he sat down behind the desk, the sadness on his face soured into something like petulance. He reached for a pen from the stand and a sheet of blank paper from the paper box. Having obtained both, he placed his left hand onto the sheet to keep it steady and began to write.

The pen, which was absolutely dry of ink, left behind only scratches.

From time to time, Javert made dipping motions with his right hand, which missed the still-lidded ink well by several inches. After covering the sheet about half-way with invisible writing, Javert replaced the pen; it fell on the table, since he also missed the quill-stand. He then reached for some sand from the blotting box, but found none: the box was empty.

Unlike all of his previous missteps, this one seemed to register: Javert frowned and felt around the empty box with his fingers some more. Then he pulled back his hand and rubbed the side of his face, wincing slightly.

Valjean watched him with morbid fascination.

Eventually, Javert's motions slowed and his gaze re-focused on the paper in front of him.

"Welcome back," said Valjean, uncertain that he would be heard.

Javert exhaled something between a wheeze and a grunt, grimacing as he did. He coughed and lifted his right hand to his mouth to wipe it.

"How long this time?" he asked hoarsely.

"About two minutes," said Valjean.

Javert tried to stand but fell back into the chair.

"Come, I'll help you back to the bed," offered Valjean.

Javert shut his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. After a few moments, he opened his eyes again and turned towards Valjean. The twin vertical folds between his eyebrows deepened.

Only now Valjean remembered the album still clutched to his chest.


	31. Chapter 31

"What are you doing with that?" asked Javert.

"You were calling out for it."

"I was?"

"You kept repeating – 'bottom drawer', 'bottom drawer.' I'm sorry."

Javert frowned at the sheet of paper on the table before him. "Why are you sorry?"

"I flipped through it."

Javert shrugged slightly. "No harm done."

Won't know that until I sleep tonight, thought Valjean.

Javert noticed his slight shudder. "Ah. Too gruesome for your tastes?"

"Its author must have had nerves of steel."

Something like a smile crossed Javert's face. "You don't know the half of it," he said, gazing at the pen-scratched sheet with pensive melancholy.

"It was Isaac's, the album?" ventured Valjean.

Javert closed his eyes once in assent. "He practiced surgery at Hotel Dieu when I met him. It was not a pleasant way to make a living."

"I can imagine."

"Can you?" Javert raised his eyebrows. "I thought I could, too."

"What do you mean?"

Javert sighed. "I had been sent to the hospital to deliver a witness subpoena." His eyes moved from side to side, as if he were reading his reminiscences from the ghostly scratches on the paper. "I had a name, but no description. There had been a bad construction accident that day - collapsed scaffolding, compounded with a traffic accident. Men with crushed limbs lay on stretchers everywhere, the staff rushed around like mad. It was pandemonium, and I wandered to and fro in it like an idiot, asking after my witness. Eventually, someone directed me to the door of an operating salle. I waited. The door opened. A man came out, tall and big and absolutely covered in blood. It was as though he had dipped his arms into a barrel of it and tried to clean them off on his apron and trousers."

"I asked him if he knew an Isaac Edelstein," went on Javert, still staring at the sheet. "He ignored me and barked at an orderly for water and soap. I asked him again. Said I had a subpoena to deliver. He washed his hands in silence, then looked me up and down and said: 'You'll do.' I hadn't yet replied when he pulled me into the operating room by the sleeve. The next patient was wheeled in, moaning around a leather strap in his mouth. I tried to explain that I could not assist, that I was on duty. But arguing with a surgeon, you know... it's like trying to plow back the rising tide. For half an hour, I held down thrashing, screeching men while he sawed off or re-set their mangled limbs. When we were done, I was ready to drown myself in brandy. I had not seen such carnage since the war. But he, he hadn't a tense muscle in his face. Cleaned the blood off his hands for the last time, calm as you please, and said: 'Now you have my full attention.' I gave him the subpoena. It was... smeared. He thanked me with a smile and excused himself. For the rest of the day, I was under the impression of having met one of Lucifer's lieutenants."

"And yet you came back to see him again," smiled Valjean.

"Well, I was brought in," said Javert evasively, crumpling the sheet in his hand. "So. So so so... Are you hungry?" he asked in a sudden non sequitur.

"I'll eat if you eat as well," said Valjean.

Javert stood up from the table and put his hands on the middle of his back, stretching this way and that, as though he'd been sitting for hours.

"May I?" He nodded at the album in Valjean's hands.

Valjean relinquished the album. Javert flipped it open about halfway, stopping on a lovingly detailed rendition of a man with his jaw and cheek sliced open with a saber.

"That's Isaac." Javert grinned. "His only self-portrait."

Valjean's face must've been a sight, because Javert's grin widened. "Not that chap. This one."

He pointed to the bottom left corner of the page, which held another drawing – a very small and hasty one, all firm lines and no shading – of a man sitting behind a desk, surrounded by books. Waves of stylized steam rose from his head. The only things one could infer from this self-portrait were that the mysterious and gruesome Isaac had curls and wore trousers that were somewhat short on him.

"One evening," continued Javert, "he was working on this drawing, when I said that my day at work had been more exhausting, so he should be the one to go out and buy us some dinner. He gave me a look, sketched this out in several seconds, and tossed the album at me. Only the damn thing closed mid-air and split my head open with the fastening." Still grinning, Javert lifted his bangs from his forehead to expose a jagged white scar. "There was blood  _everywhere_. He had to stitch me up. How's that for irony?"

Javert flipped a few pages and hmmed. "Go downstairs to the porter's lodge," he instructed Valjean distractedly. "There will be a pot of soup on the stove. Have at it. I'll be down to join you soon."

Valjean was on his third bowl of thin cabbage soup when he saw a spot of light in the hallway. A second later, Javert walked in with his hydrostatic lamp. He seemed almost completely restored.

"Tell me there's still some left," he said, setting the lamp onto the table. "I recall how much you used to put away in Toulon."

"No more than I was given," said Valjean, tipping the pot slightly towards Javert to reassure him that the soup was not yet all gone.

"You were given enough to feed a team of oxen," countered Javert, filling his own bowl. "Which was only fair, I suppose, since they expected you to perform the work of two teams."

Valjean chewed thoughtfully on a crust of bread. The memory of a peculiar moment came back to him, of a time just past the initial daze that followed his incarceration but before bitterness began brewing in him in earnest. He had been breaking rocks in the quarry with his mates, when, surprising even himself, he spoke up, addressing no one in particular: "How queer life is! I had no work and no food. I stole. Now I am condemned to being employed and fed for five years."

The two new kids were so stunned that they lowered their pickaxes – they had never heard Valjean utter a word. But Brevet snickered and clapped him on the shoulder; then Valjean laughed as well, until a passing sergeant yelled at them to shut their traps and get back to work.

I could've just kept on like that, thought Valjean. What stopped me? Why did I grow so horrid? Plenty of others were there for trifling offenses, lesser than mine even, and they did not become hateful.

"Homesick?" Javert smiled like a dog, with his mouth slightly open and all of his teeth and gums showing.

Valjean couldn't answer, so he ate more bread.


	32. Chapter 32

For a few minutes, the only sounds in the lodge were discrete slurps and the scraping of spoons on ceramic bowls. Finally, Valjean decided that he'd had enough, tipped his bowl towards himself and snagged the last bit of cabbage with the last big spoonful.

Truth be told, he was still hungry: the soup was more broth than substance. However, Valjean had come to realize in his life's experience that he was really a thwarted glutton, and that unstopped, he might perhaps eat a whole side of beef in one sitting and still have room left over. That for the most part he had never been given the opportunity to indulge this vice, Valjean considered the very salt of providential wisdom.

No, better not think about beef and salt anymore, thought Valjean and pushed the bowl away.

The meal also annoyed him on Javert's behalf. Whatever the man was paying the portress for this meager fare, it was too much. The soup had not even bacon in it. Valjean's memories of the years lived with his sister and her children were growing dim, but even so he could still remember that they, the poorest of the poor in their village, had had bacon in their cabbage soup, and not just on the holidays.

Javert did not seem nearly as bothered by the quality of his nourishment. Having cleaned his bowl twice, he put it into the pile of dishes in the sink and came back to the table looking almost as lively as he had at the start of the evening.

"Is this all you eat these days?" asked Valjean. "Rather scant for a man your size."

Javert smirked. "If you're still hungry, I'm sure I can scrounge you up something else." His eyes searched the lodge and alit on something on the windowsill.

"I'm all right. You, on the other hand, had next to no dinner."

"I had two bowls of soup."

"Call that soup?" said Valjean with a slight unconscious accent, a relic of long-forgotten parents and Brie childhood. "There weren't even no meat in it!"

Javert shrugged and went to retrieve a saucer-covered clay jug from the window. "I rarely eat meat."

"Have you no money for it?"

"I am rarely hungry for it."

"And so you live on cabbage soup, and biscuits, and apples..."

"I eat other things, too," said Javert defensively, lifting the saucer from the top of the jug. "I eat eggs. And milk. Will you have some?"

Valjean declined with a shake of the head and watched Javert fill a chipped mug halfway with milk from the jug. "And  _larton brutal_ ," he said, nodding towards the heel of black bread left over in the bread-basket. "No white bread even?"

"White bread is too refined; it is unhealthy." Javert took a sip. "And why do you concern yourself? I've always eaten like this. I'm still alive."

"Alive! barely, if you ask me. I bet you wouldn't fall over half so much if you just ate more."

Javert closed his eyes as he drank the rest of his milk. "Odd to hear you say this," he said, licking a milk mustache off his dark upper lip. "Isaac used to tell me the very same thing. In different words, with a German accent. 'How can you expect to regenerate neural stability if you stay chronically malnourished?' Every other evening or so, for four years straight."

"Sound like he was a smart man," said Valjean. "You should've listened to him."

Javert exhaled with resignation.

"Everyone's an expert on my health. First Isaac, then Eugene, now you..."

He pulled the lamp closer to himself and took a wrinkled sheet of paper out of his pocket. It was covered in pencil drawings of animals, flowers, stars and other minutia. Noticing Valjean's interest, Javert rotated the paper his way.

"Is this from your brother?" asked Valjean.

The drawings were just outlines, without shading. After the magnificent showcase of the anatomic album, they looked like a child's idle amusements.

"I expected writing," said Javert with displeasure. "I appreciate that he is under surveillance, but there are limits to conspiracy. It isn't even a cipher. What am I to make of these doodles?"

"How did you come by this?"

"He passed it to me through a boy playing in the Palais Royal. He and his so-called 'colleagues' had an early supper there." Javert's lip twitched in a slight grimace. "You've met them all before, you know. During your charity escapade a year and a half ago. The one that went so very sour on all parties involved. The one where you climbed out the window so adroitly right before my eyes. What? did you think I didn't know?"

"You never ordered your agents to restrain me. I was sure you didn't recognize me."

"Well, not at first. After we found you missing, and the window ladder swinging, well! my stomach sank. I went back to examine the bed where you had been sitting, and what do you know - half the rope on the floor had been cut. And not just cut: sawed through painstakingly with a tiny saw-blade. This is why I hate effecting arrests with soldier guard. The sergeant untying you didn't even blink when I rubbed his nose into those rope-ends. 'Uhgh, duhh, I dunno why they be so, M'sieur Javert, you said 'untie the gentleman' so I untied the gentleman, I don't know nothing 'bout no saw blades...' My agents must've thought me mad - I nosed along the floorboards with my arse in the air like a bloodhound for a good quarter of an hour. But I found it - I did! That saw-blade of yours  _and_  its sou-piece box. And during questioning, they all couldn't wait to describe to me what a queer  _dab_  their mark was, with his old clothes and mild ways and bottomless pockets and monstrous strength.  _Pardieu,_  did I kick myself then!.."

Javert shook his head.

"So have I met your brother as well?"

"Oh yes."

Valjean thought back to the soot-covered, masked bandits crowding Thenardier's attic.

"It isn't Thenardier, is it? Please, tell me it isn't him!"

Javert stood up.

"Let's go back upstairs," he said. "This sort of talk isn't for rooms with windows opening into the street."


	33. Chapter 33

In the room, Javert put the lamp on the desk and sat down to study the sheet. Valjean went to stand next to him and looked over his shoulder.

"So your brother passes you notes through a boy?"

"He passes me notes any way he can," said Javert. "And not just notes." He paused. "And not just him."

"What are these drawings about?"

Javert sucked his teeth. "Would that I knew," he said with frustration.

Valjean considered the paper. There were on it, arranged in no particular apparent order or pattern: a bird, two stars of unequal sizes, a fish, a tree, a heart pierced with an arrow, a horse, a book, and a few other items Valjean could not immediately identify on account of the faintness of the pencil marks delineating them.

"Perhaps it is a rebus?" he suggested.

Javert's lips moved silently for a moment or so as he thought about it. "Too easy. If I can solve it, so can a third party. Although..." He rubbed his chin. "You know, he said something to the boy I sent to Palais Royal to watch him. A rhyme about how the little soldier will grow up to replace the big one."

"Him passing the torch to the young agent?"

Javert nodded. "The boy told me the rhyme was stupid. I must agree. It was dead stupid. The child didn't understand the hint, - I did not instruct him to listen for signals of acknowledgement. But the rest of the gang was sitting right there. Who knows if any of them caught on?.."

"They were in Palais Royal?" asked Valjean incredulously. The specter of a small army of armed figures in black silk masks rose before him. "All of them at once?"

"Of course not," snorted Javert. "Patron-Minette numbers at least half a hundred men and women altogether. Only the four heads of the concern take occasional corporate supper at Palais Royal."

"It's odd to think of these villains up and about in the daytime, mingling with regular folk," said Valjean. "When I met them, they seemed to be entirely creatures of shadow."

Javert looked at him with a combination of pity, disgust and mild curiosity.

"Don't tell me you are one of those hysterical cases who ascribe to villains a horror of all things good and pure, like the sun, or crosses, or parks with flowers and children…"

"I'm not, but the thieves I knew did tend to keep night hours," shrugged Valjean.

"The thieves you knew…" drawled Javert. "Who might they be, then?"

Valjean said nothing.

"Pals of yours from days of yore, or more recent acquaintances?"

"I'm not giving you any names," said Valjean firmly.

"Oh, there's no need for that," muttered Javert. He was staring once more into the sheet with doodles. "In fact," he said playfully, "how about I give you their names instead?"

Valjean looked at him with worry. Half a minute passed. Javert continued to stare into the paper, frowning and occasionally making odd noises in the back of his throat. Valjean's worry grew and grew. Finally, Javert smirked and said:

"How's that for a jape? Scared you or what?"

Valjean exhaled noisily. "No more japes like that, if you please."

"Fine," said Javert in a quieter voice, then added with an odd emphasis: "Let's have a different sort of jape."

Still squinting at the sheet, like a pharmacist trying to decipher a prescription, he opened a small drawer right under the desk-top and retrieved from it a pencil stub covered end to end with tooth marks.

"See, I may not know your pals by name, aside from the characters I and the rest of the world encountered at the Champmathieu trial," said Javert, poising the tip of the pencil over the paper, "but I'll do you one better. Shall I recount your  _marche-route_  from Toulon to Paris that time you oh-so-cleverly 'died' after falling from the Orion?"

Javert began tracing carefully the contours of the drawings. As he did so, he listed in order all the villages, hamlets and market-towns where Valjean had stopped during his final flight from Toulon north through the Haute-Alpes. Valjean could hardly believe his ears.

"…Grange-de-Doumec… Perigeux… post coach to Paris," concluded Javert, drawing the last ray to the last star. "Well? How did I do?"

Valjean was dumb with shock. Javert had only made one mistake: Valjean had never stopped at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. But even that was no great error. Valjean had planned to stop there, but at the last moment, the sight of the local gendarme sunning himself on a bench near the village church spooked him. So he backtracked about a mile south and stopped instead at a forester's hut. The forester had been an old  _galerien_  himself, and, like Valjean, a reformed poacher. They fell to talking about rifles and ways of pouring good lead shot; then the forester attempted to change the topic to techniques of coin counterfeiting and solicit Valjean's opinion on how to make good forms for that. At that point, Valjean quickly made his excuses and retired for the night to the corner allotted to him: the forester sounded too much like an  _agent provocateur_. But even that would explain nothing, since Valjean told him nothing of his rambling itinerary.

"You followed a well-trodden path," went on Javert, as he contemplated the now sharp drawings. "Every convict who runs from Toulon thinks he is inventing the wheel when he takes this turn or that one, stops at this town or that one, buys his clothes from this fence or that one. In reality, they follow a route which a hundred horses had trampled before him. The more successful a route is in bringing a man to Paris, the more men are likely to hear about it from him at the galleys when he's denounced and recaptured. Or when his pals are taken in and carry his stories back to those he left behind down South. _A bon entendeur, salut!_  That's life."

Javert set down the pencil, then moved it slightly so that it would be parallel with the edge of the table.

"That is life," he repeated and stood up. "Yes. Well, thank you very much for your tremendous help. I have it."

"What is it?"

Javert picked up the lamp from the desk and said with an air of solemn satisfaction:

"It is definitely not a rebus."


	34. Chapter 34

Author's note: Warning – chapter contains an anachronism for no reason other than it amused me.

* * *

 

 

"What are you doing?" asked Valjean as he watched Javert ruffle through the drawers of his vanity set.

"I'm getting ready."

"For what?"

Javert picked up the large leather case leaned against the vanity set, placed it on his knees, undid its buckles, and took out a toilet service in Japanese porcelain. Inside was a collection of tiny jars and brushes worthy of Michelangelo.

Valjean had purchased a similar but smaller article for Cosette several years ago - her first make-up case, in fact. "Something no fifteen-year-old girl should be without," the pert young sales-girl at Herbaut's had told him where he had stopped to pay a milliner's bill. Cosette's enthusiasm with her present had been boundless, until she discovered that the array of powders and pastes secreted in the case lacked two shades of peach which were apparently to be of vital importance that season. Ever the optimist, Cosette declared that this was a perfect learning opportunity, for now she would have to be just that much cleverer when mixing her colors. But still, the error stung. From that point on, Valjean left all feminine purchases in Cosette's hands and simply signed the bills when they came. Despite Cosette's magnanimity, he conceived a secret horror of all matters pertaining to the arcane art of feminine toilet-making - or whatever was going on here.

Javert considered this embarrassment of cosmetic riches with something akin to puzzlement. In the mirror, Valjean saw him purse his lips slightly to one side in thought.

"Spring, summer, autumn or winter?" mused Javert at length out loud.

Valjean took a couple of nonchalant steps towards the dressing-table, in case Javert's mind was fixing to go off the rails again.

"Well?"

Apparently, the question had been posed in earnest.

"I have no idea what you mean," said Valjean.

"Come, come!" said Javert incredulously "You raised a girl child into a woman. Didn't she teach you anything about these things?"

"The only thing she ever asked me was 'Daddy, how do I look in this?' And I only ever needed one answer: 'Charming.'"

"Hm." Javert scratched his cheek and grimaced. "Not a useful answer, in my case. Well, no matter. The decision requires thought, but luckily I require a shave. One will combine the useful with the even more useful."

He replaced the still-unbuckled leather case against the wall and headed to the kitchen, where Valjean heard him filling a metal basin with water from the hot samovar. Valjean himself was directed to fetch a towel from the linen cabinet. Minutes later Javert sat down again, face freshly warmed by the hot towel, a small cake of soap in one hand and a razor in the other.

"Spring, I think," he said and began lathering his cheek eagerly and sloppily, like a youth of seventeen.

"What does 'spring' mean?"

"I'm trying to decide what hue to dye myself for tonight's excursion," finally explained Javert. "I need to decide the overall look before I can start in on the details. The seasons denote a combined effect of complexion, hair color and eye color. A useful sort of classification. Mostly has currency with public women, dancing girls, and society coquettes."

Valjean imagined Javert in a wig with artfully curled tresses towering over a gaggle of women, and immediately wished he hadn't.

"However, Surete agents have come to mark it for use as well," went on Javert. "Vidocq is quite extraordinary at make-up, but he's also rather lucky, in this respect - he's pale and light-haired, whereas I'm dusky and brunet. I have the devil's own time disguising myself. Women have it easy by comparison."

Javert tried the razor blade with his forefinger, hissed and brought the digit to his mouth. "Aya, what a dunce," he lisped softly through half clenched teeth. "Just sharpened it three days ago, no kidding. Forgot  _completely_. Must be old age." He began to shave.

At that, Valjean finally comprehended what the agent was telling him. He also realized that he was becoming weary of always being several steps behind Javert in conversation, like a Mohameddan wife whom custom compels to trail her husband in public.

"Vidocq told you to stay put," admonished Valjean. "He gave you an order."

"Not an order," corrected Javert. "A strong suggestion. But he knows me better than that. How can I stay put? My baby brother is out there."

"How old is he?"

"What does it matter? He is a good deal younger than myself. Should I live to be a hundred and lay withering from old age on a cot in Les Invalides, he'd still be my baby brother."

"What if you have another attack?"

"I won't. They come regularly, and they end regularly." Javert paused to shave carefully around a mole. "Mostly."

"I shall accompany you, then."

Wide grey eyes regarded from the mirror Valjean with comical astonishment. "Perish the thought."

"I thought you wanted me to lend a hand, to join the organization."

"Join it, yes, but as a foot-soldier, not a field-marshal!"

Javert switched to the other cheek.

"No, no..." he said between the blade strokes. "Go home... sleep... Make yourself tea... rest in the armchair... read your adventure stories. Someone else will drop by. Myself or Vidocq or some third party. And if they don't find you on location, then…"

"…I should consider my entire person forfeit?"

"Well done. You're far quicker than you like to pretend." Javert finished and wiped his face with the moistened end of the towel. "Not that I didn't know that already," he noted with some smugness.

Clean-shaven, he looked even more worn out: rakish dark stubble had masked a slightly sagging jowl line.

"You trusted me earlier this evening. Why not now?" asked Valjean.

"Earlier this evening, you were only playing a walk-on role. If I take you along now, you'd be at least a supporting actor and very possibly a co-lead. I know you're a virtuoso liar, but improvisation does not account for the entire art of acting."

"Is being a thief and pretending to be an honest citizen so different from being an honest citizen and pretending to be a thief?"

Javert leaned towards the mirror.

"I think you mean to say," he murmured examining his jawline closely, "'Is being an honest citizen and pretending to be a thief different from being a thief and pretending to be an honest citizen pretending to be a thief?'" Javert sighed theatrically. "Oh, Valjean, Valjean… Valjean, Valjean, Valjean… I'm starting to regret involving you in all this. You'll break my head open with your puzzles before long, I'm sure..."

He leaned back in his chair and opened the make-up case once more. "And you never did answer: spring, summer, autumn or winter?"

Valjean thought back to his happiest memories, serene days of puttering in the vegetable garden of the house on Rue Plumet and watching Cosette chase butterflies in her school-girl's merino gown.

"Spring," he said confidently.

"Spring it is," smiled Javert, then lifted a hand to his head and, in one swift motion, pulled off all his hair.


	35. Chapter 35

Valjean was silent for a few seconds. Then he said: "Will you permit me a remark of admonishment?"

Javert, who was once more rummaging through the large leather case, hummed inquisitively. The hum was muffled and all but lost in its nethers.

"If you want me dead, there are far quicker ways of doing it."

In lieu of a reply, Javert picked something out of the case, considered it briefly, then replaced it in the case.

"Of course, I grant you that I might, in fact, die of apoplexy at some point in time tonight," continued Valjean. "But that is an unreasonable gamble on your part."

Javert dove out of the case. The mirror reflected something like surprise on his freshly-shaved face and something like a rag in his right hand. He looked blankly at Valjean, who stood a few feet behind him with his arms crossed on his chest; then somewhat less blankly at the rag-like object in his hand; then even more blankly at Valjean again.

"Eh?" he finally asked.

He lifted the case off his knees and placed it back up against the wall. This time, the case fell open, and Valjean saw that it was full of wigs.

"'Eh' nothing! You've been vexing me with mysteries and revelations all day! First you turn up alive. That alone almost did me in. Then you turn out to be an agent of the Sûreté, -  less supernatural but also perfectly strange. Since when do inspectors affiliate themselves with the Sûreté?"

"Since 1814," said Javert flatly, stuffing his head – which Valjean could now see was not bald but shaved very close - into a dark blonde wig. His success was intermittent: as soon as one side of the wig seemed in place, the other would slide off. However, Javert did not seem put off by the Sisyphean labor and was content to progress in minute increments.

"Then you tell me that I am obligated to join you, or it's back to the hulks," continued Valjean.

"You aren't obligated to anything," remarked Javert. "The choice is yours alone. If you would prefer the hulks, well…"

"Then you become mysteriously ill..."

"'Become' is an odd choice of word."

"And what about just now, with the wig? What was that?"

Letting go of the hair, which was still sitting comically askew atop his head, Javert picked up a brush and a small ceramic tile. Opening two small boxes and a jar, he spat onto the tile and began mixing a color, periodically grasping a longish blonde lock hanging low over his left eye, and leaning in close to the lamp to compare its color to the one being mixed on the tile.

"Are you finished with your opening statement, _Monsieur le Procureur Général_?" he said sarcastically. "May the defense have the floor?"

Javert smeared a bit color onto a minute comb and began applying it to his left eyebrow. Valjean stifled laughter. Javert and Cosette turned out to share an endearing and curious habit: both of them held their mouths slightly open as they applied paint to themselves.

"In points of order. Yes, I am indeed not dead. This vexes you. You have seen the administrative communiqué printed in the Moniteur. You are outraged. An organ of the press has lied to you. My condolences. The piece had in fact been composed by Vidocq and myself. Vidocq insisted we include a bit about temporary derangement. They kept that. I closed it with an apostrophe to Justice as a severe dam who sometimes eats her own cubs. The censors took that out. In short, you were deceived. So was everyone else, including the Prefect of Police. Don't feel slighted."

Javert switched eyebrows.

"Onto your second point, where I am suddenly an agent with Vidocq instead of an inspector with the Prefecture. There is little suddenness about this, your ignorance of the fact notwithstanding. I have been an agent with the Sûreté since I returned from the Russian campaign. I have also been an inspector with the Prefecture concurrently, at Vidocq's behest. The Sûreté needed a liaison with the municipality, someone trustworthy. My record of service, both at the galleys and in the Guard, was unimpeachable. Vidocq had promised me earlier – years earlier, when I was still adjutant-garde-chiorme in the galleys - a police career of arresting criminals instead of inspecting walk-ways and gutters. The municipality could not do likewise. I chose Vidocq. Monsieur Henry designated me an inspector, salaried me accordingly, gave me a numbered rattan, and sent me on my merry way. I've been with Vidocq ever since, excepting the years when I was alone, or rather, with you."

"With regards to your having to choose between Sûreté service and the hulks – if you are desperately against it, I suppose I can arrange for a more conventional parole system for you. Vidocq would protest, but he is no longer in a position to press me. I do not think you will ask this of me, though. You would not be comfortable with anyone else supervising your lawfulness."

"So sure, are you?" said Valjean, arms still crossed on his chest.

"Quite sure," affirmed Javert without an audible trace of irony and began rubbing yet another color mix into his face and neck. "Moving on. My mysterious illness is no mystery at all – I received a head wound during the war in Russia and have been epileptic since. Epilepsy does not tend to dispose people to the sufferer, so I like to keep it to myself. I usually manage. You directed me for five years and never suspected it. What else was there? Ah yes, the wig. I wear it on account of sometimes having to wear others. Better to have little hair of one's own. No footholds for lice. This accounts for the last of your terrible apoplexy-inducing mysteries, I believe."

Javert dusted his hands and turned to face Valjean. "In conclusion, I move that you are an old paranoiac, and I rest my case."

With his large grey eyes now softened by blonde eyelashes and eyebrows, his skin lightened, and the fair mane of a wig finally affixed to his head as needed, Javert looked astonishingly unlike himself. Had he met him in the street, Valjean would have thought him a phlegmatic Dane, and perhaps a poet.


	36. Chapter 36

"You're not going."

"I am indeed going."

"I won't allow it."

"Who are you to allow me anything?"

The words came out slurred: Javert was undoing with his teeth some stitches on the high collar of a worn gentleman's street jacket at least a decade out of fashion.

"I'll follow you."

"Do that, and I will hit you."

"Fine, hit me."

"Over the head, with a brick, several times if necessary. If you will not be obedient, you will be unconscious."

Javert began feeding a wide flat bit of leather into the split-open collar– an anti-garroting measure, Valjean realized. His insides tightened with unease.

"Javert, I've dealt with these people before – they were going to torture me, and I hadn't even done anything to them! What do you think they are going to do to you, a police agent, their sworn enemy? They'll tear you limb from limb!"

Javert snorted.

"What melodrama! You should write opera librettos."

"You need a bodyguard!"

"No, what I need is a good night's sleep, a decent breakfast, and then some more sleep for good measure."

Javert plucked a threaded needle from the small round pincushion nestled by the mirror and began stitching the collar back up.

"So if you want to be useful, stay here and arrange for all three. My laundress will be by around seven in the morning; pick up my linen from her and give her the set from my bed. Also, I will leave you money to buy me two eggs for breakfast. And water, buy water when the carrier comes around. Two buckets – they are all in the kitchen, stacked near the stove. But for now, I am going, and you are staying."

"In fact," he continued, tearing off the thread and putting on the jacket, "I'm about to show you just how going I am and how staying you are. Do you see that candle on the windowsill? Bring it over here."

Valjean obeyed. Javert took the pewter candle-holder from him, pinched off the burnt part of the wick, and lit the stub from the lamp.

"You will hold this," he said, handing the candle back to Valjean, "up to the kitchen window, and you will move it about, - up and down, side to side, any which way - so that I see the flame dance from the outside as I walk away. You will do this for five minutes - I trust you have a watch on you. If I see the flame go still, I will know that you have set the candle down and left the premises to follow me. Likewise, if I see the flame go out and not reappear in a timely fashion – there are phosphorus matches on the mantelpiece – I will know that you've absconded. And then you can…"

"…'Consider your entire person forfeit,' yes."

Javert smiled.

"Always knew that saying about old dogs and new tricks was just slander."

He opened a drawer and retrieved from it several coins, a folded pen-knife, and a small flask with something sloshing audibly inside. The coins were stacked on the table; the knife and the flask dropped into a trouser pocket. Then Javert patted himself down, cast a vaguely searching look about the room, and looked at Valjean with a frown, as if to say: tell me what I've forgotten.

"The note," said Valjean. "You left it on the table."

Javert blinked. "That I did," he said.

He walked up to the table and picked up the note. Valjean followed him with the candle.

"Yes," said Javert, laying the note back down. "Yes, yes. Thank you. Good-bye."

With that, he put on a narrow-brimmed cap of brown velveteen and headed towards the door. Valjean stood in his way.

"You did not take the note."

"If they find it on me, I'm a dead man."

"You did not take a weapon."

"One of mine against all of theirs, I'm also a dead man."

"Where are you going, Javert?"

"To do my duty and save my brother. Move aside."

"Why won't you let me come with you? I will not say a word. I will be dumb as a fish."

"You have no role in this farce."

"Say that I am your relative."

"You and I hardly look like members of the same species, much less the same family."

"Say that I am your valet."

Javert flashed his large even teeth.

"You forget that I am a ruffian now. Our kind does not employ staff."

"Say that I am also a  _fanandel._ "

"And should they pull us apart, how long will it take before they catch us in a contradiction about your record, or your acquaintances, or your aliases, or your family? Do you expect to play 'Jean the Jack' to them and impress them with a stolen bread-loaf?"

He moved forward, but Valjean grasped him by the lapels, stopping them both in the open doorway.

"Then say something else!"

They looked intently at each other: Valjean with resolve masking dread, Javert with condescension masking ire.

"Say whatever you must," persisted Valjean. "I can't let you go alone to your death like this. We can pretend to be… There are other reasons for two men to travel together at night. I can pretend…"

He trailed off, his whole face burning. However, he did not look away.

For a long moment, Javert simply held his gaze. Then he leaned in until their noses almost touched, and said in a sibilant and throaty whisper that sent shivers down Valjean's spine:

"If you can't even bring yourself to speak it, Valjean, how do you expect to pretend it?"

Raising his hand to his chest, he grasped Valjean's fingers, held them for a fraction of a second, then detached them firmly but gently from his clothes, and stepped through the doorway, replacing the cap on his head. Slack with shame and helplessness, Valjean let him pass.

"Don't forget the candle," said Javert without turning around as he walked down the hallway. The moldering arsenic-green wallpaper muffled his words and the sounds of his footsteps. "I'll be watching for it."


	37. Chapter 37

Defeated, Valjean stood in the warm draft of the half-open window and moved the candle slowly: up and down, up and down...

A month and a half ago - a lifetime ago, it now seemed - he had accidentally stumbled upon the imprint of Cosette's love letter to Marius in her blotting-book. In that moment, he had felt his life's purpose desert him. Cosette had grown up and found a lover to dote on; he, who had hitherto been everything to her, was now only her father – an obstacle on her way to future happiness.

Now, looking out from the kitchen window of Javert's apartment into the deep shadows of the quiet streets of the Saint-Gervais quarter, he felt a different kind of loss. The only human being in the whole world who knew him entirely, both as the beastly convict and as the saintly philanthropist, - though he smirked at the former and sneered at the latter – was slipping away from him.

Valjean had no doubt that Javert was in mortal danger. The memory of Javert bound to the post in the tavern at the barricades; Vidocq's tirade about his underling's perverse inclination to suicide; the helpless self-loathing he saw flash in Javert's eyes as he had come to after his second attack at the desk - all this pointed to a terrible intent.

Even if Javert meant to fight honestly for his life, what could he do? He had gone out unarmed.

Specters of the masked bandits of Patron Minette rose before Valjean's eyes. He had seen Javert subdue them once with a few well-chosen phrases, but as a representative of the city police, armed with a massive lead-headed cane and protected by a squadron of officers of peace. Now he faced them as a man, armed with a pen-knife and protected only by a strip of leather sewn into his collar.

Valjean cursed the timid, guilty part of himself that still shrank in Javert's presence. Why did he let the man silence him? Why did he let him walk out the door unaccompanied?

A sudden gust of wind flickered the candle. Valjean tried to shield it with his palm as he shut the window, but the flame had already gone out. He grabbed the box of lucifer matches from the mantelpiece. The matches flared up and went out almost instantly; the candle would not relight. Tossing the fourth useless match, Valjean looked around for something more flammable. His eyes alit on the waste paper basket.

Pulled out a wad of crumpled paper, Valjean straightened it out, lit a corner, then relit the candle from it. He did not even know why he bothered: the watch on the windowsill indicated that five minutes had already passed from Javert's departure, and he was now free to stop signaling. But it seemed fitting to leave the candle burning in the window anyway – if for no other purpose than to serve as a beacon, letting Javert know that someone was awaiting his safe return.

Valjean noticed that his sooty thumb had left a smudge on the crumpled sheet. In the smudge, thin white letters stood out clearly.

This was the sheet Javert had scratched at during his fit with the dry metal pen.

Grabbing a pinch of ash from the fireplace, Valjean coated his fingers and began to rub the sheet from edge to edge. More and more impressions of letters appeared. A small hope blossomed in Valjean's chest: perhaps the scribbles held some hint of what Javert had made of the note's code. If he knew where to go, then perhaps not all was lost.

When the entire sheet was dark gray, Valjean brought the sheet to the candle flame. The top line read:

_Hier wird keinem das silbernes Messer in den Rücken gesteckt._

Underneath it was a line in French:

_No one gets struck in the back with a silver knife here._

Valjean read further. The third line was also in German:

_Hier werden keine silbernen Messer in die Rücken gesteckt._

And underneath, a translation:

_No silver knives are stuck into backs here._

Variations on these lines covered half a page, the last line breaking off at " _silbernes_." Finally, Valjean set the sheet aside with a renewed feeling of empathy for Javert's condition. It could be that these lines held some secret meaning to him, or perhaps they were nothing but ravings set to paper. Either way, it chilled Valjean to think of the strange forces in Javert's head that compelled him to do things against his will, whether it was staring at walls in public houses or sitting down to his desk, blind and deaf to the world, to practice German grammar like a schoolboy.

Finding no answers to where Javert had gone, Valjean crumpled the sheet back up and switched his attention to coded note itself, which Javert had left on the table.

The contours of the drawings were more visible now that Javert went over them in coal pencil. There was a sun with six asymmetrical rays; to its right, a daisy; between and underneath them, a little bird sitting atop a heart pierced with an arrow. Below that, a fish swam away from a wolf. Beneath them was an open book. In the bottom left hand corner, there was a horse. That was it.

The figure of the wolf, which was seated and had its maw extended upwards in an apparent howl, was a familiar one. Valjean pulled out the card he received in the mail to compare the drawing with the printed figure on the shield. Not the same, but similar enough.

Valjean considered the beast, then the fish. Something about Christ, perhaps? Or sin, guarding against sin?

 _Meleus in umbra pugnabimus_. The Spartan motto. 'We shall fight all the better in the shadow.'

Valjean noticed that he was smudging the drawing and set it down to wipe his hands on his shirt. But he had already left a sooty streak between the Sun and the daisy, connecting them by extending the sun's thickest ray.

Valjean stared at the smudge, his hands slowing as he wiped them. Now more than ever, the drawing reminded him of something - a thing so familiar and so obvious that he was clearly a ninny for not seeing it! Something that Javert had gotten easily after a few minutes' thought, despite being initially baffled.

The fish swam away from the wolf, under the Sun and the flower, above the book and the horse...

Nonsense, thought Valjean. No, I shall never get it like this. Come, come, let's be methodical. Of what did Javert speak as he contemplated this note?

Of my passage from the Orion through the Alps to Paris, he answered himself.

Why did he speak of escape routes from Toulon? Surely his brother did not leave town tonight…

And what did he say when he got it? ' _C'est la vie_.' Well, what is life? The fish swims. The Sun shines. The wolf howls. The flower grows. 

Valjean felt himself on the verge of discovery – or perhaps of madness. This must have been how Galileo felt before realizing that it was the Earth that moved, and the Sun was really fixed in the sky, like the stars.

One moment, thought Valjean. Was it the drawing of the Sun after all? Or was it simply a big star?

Well, the Sun is a star, he reminded himself. All the astronomers and natural philosophers think so. Even Descartes had written about it.

And just like that, everything fell into place:

"Place d'Etoile!" exclaimed Valjean in his excitement.

As if by magic, the picture transformed before his very eyes. No longer did he see a fish, a flower, a wolf, a horse or a bird; now he saw the river's flow, the Tuileries gardens, the Surete headquarters on Ile de la Cite, Champs de Mars - and Javert's brother, Moineau*. The sparrow sat in the middle of the Champs Elysees, apparently somewhere between Chemin de Versailles and Cours de la Reyne.

And what of the heart with the arrow through it atop which he sat? What did that signify?

Valjean thought back to the few strolls he had dared take with Cosette in the Champs Elysees over the years. What did it have, besides trees and crowds, and carriage processions?

Yes, he thought, there is only one thing it could be:

A tavern.

* * *

 

*Moineau, fr. - literally, "sparrow."


	38. Chapter 38

Valjean was not a man given easily to tears. He had wept going away to Toulon in his youth; he had wept at his own wickedness after robbing Little Gervais; he had wept when he knew he was doomed to lose Cosette. But outside of such cataclysmic upsets, there was little that could wring a tear from Valjean's now tranquil, now melancholy, now sullen, but usually dry eye.

But he was ready to weep now.

Valjean had caught a cab from the intersection of Rue de Paradis and Rue de Temple, instructing the driver to take him to Place de la Madeleine. Halfway there, he changed the destination to the intersection of Rue de la Madeileine and Rue St. Honore, in a desperate attempt to get there faster. A silver piece of five francs bought Valjean those two minutes. But there was not enough silver in the mines of Argentina to buy back the interminable eons he then lost on the Cours de la Reine.

Traversing the park northward for the first time, Valjean was almost running as his eyes searched for a signboard with a pierced heart. He found none. Traversing it southward on his way back, he walked slower, examining every shadow and bush on suspicions of being a drinking house. Still nothing. The small, tidy taverns of Cours de la Reine did not extend to that part of the map. And yet the heart had been situated here – at least so Valjean recalled, and his recollection was all he had now. He could not consult the note again; afraid of compromising Javert with it, he had left it at the apartment.

Now, going up Cours de la Reine for the third time and still seeing nothing but huge elms and fragrant grass in the light of the gibbous moon, Valjean felt like five kinds of fool. Perhaps the drawings were not a map after all. Perhaps if he had been a proper criminal, a pedigreed and guild-approved one, he might've known better what to make of all those secret signs. But he was just an imposter, an unlucky peasant who never learned any secret languages because he never really belonged to the underworld.

Valjean now stood about halfway into the park. The night's excitement had caught up with him; he felt drained. Walking back for a fourth try would have been a further waste of time; returning to Javert's apartment meant admitting defeat.

Bereft of sensible courses of action, Valjean lay down on the grass and closed his eyes.

The breeze was picking up as the night air grew colder, rustling in the elms. A bird cooed something in the branches above Valjean's head. Some nameless critter croaked and murmured far away in the grass, its voice barely carrying. Soon, another of its kind joined in. Valjean imagined, dreamily, a toad and his plumper, brighter-colored lady friend calling out to each other and wondered how come there were only two, and why they 'spoke' more in turns than in typical anuran concert.

He was falling into a doze when suddenly he heard the first toad rumble distinctly:

" _...tonnerre!.."_

Cold sweat beading on his brow, Valjean rolled up into a sitting crouch and looked around. Nothing stirred in the shadows; he was still alone.

A dream?

Suddenly, the oath came again, then a few more. They seemed to be coming straight out of the grass, ahead and to the left of where Valjean lay. The earth itself seemed to be disgorging them.

Shuddering, Valjean arose and crept towards the sound.

"...then I don't know…I mean, really!" It was a woman's voice.

"...should know?" replied the second voice, a man. "Let the bosses deal...ought to know what's what. That's why ...big-time  _fanandels_...know things. Babet doesn't pay me to know things - he pays me to cosh people!"

"Well, he pays me to cook, and not to keep tally of visitors!"

Valjean stopped and looked around again. The park was deserted. It was as though he were eavesdropping on two arguing  _fleurs-de-marie_ , if one could imagine flowers converse about cooking and coshing people.

He dropped to the ground to listen closer.

"Leave him to himself. If he's due here, he's here. If he's not due here, he'll get shown the way out soon enough."

Valjean heard steps and a door creaking then being slammed shut.

"Fine! let him sit here," said the woman, softer now. "No skin off my nose."

The door creaked and was shut again.

Now on his belly, Valjean moved forward in a crawl, feeling the grass before him, until eventually his hand swept ahead and found nothing but air.

He was at the edge of a large ditch, which had been hidden from his sight by the gentle sloping of the ground. Across from where he lay, barely daring to breathe, two small out-buildings leaned against the side of the excavated hill – a henhouse and a firewood-shed, as far as he could discern in the darkness. To his left was a vine-covered trellis arcade - from a distance, it had resembled a low boggy patch in the ground. If he raised his head slightly, Valjean could spy the edges of a long wooden table and bench that the arcade covered. Next to it, a stairway was cut almost perpendicularly into the loam of the hillside.

And to his right, at the other edge of the ditch, was the tavern itself: a miserable dilapidated shack whose smokeless chimney he had taken twice for an elm stump in the dark.

Valjean had arrived at Coeur Percée, one of the last subterranean drinking houses of the Elysian Fields.


	39. Chapter 39

Valjean set his forehead flat on the ground and tried to will the cogs in his head to spin faster.

It was plain that Javert was, at that very moment, sitting, or perhaps lying, under the concealing vines of the trellis, or perhaps inside the shack, and wherever he was, he was feigning immobility. Clearly the stubborn fool would not be stopped from ambushing all of Patron-Minette with nothing but his bare fists. It was likely that he had a plan – Javert most always had some kind of a plan - but what good is a clever plan against a sharp _dague?_

And even if his plan is clever enough to account for this, thought Valjean, what if another fit overtakes him? What if he can't bring anything into operation because he's too busy stumbling around...

"...pie-eyed."

"He sure smells like he's passed a week in a wineshop."

The sudden creaking of the door and the voices sent Valjean face down into the mud mid-thought.

"Still can't fathom how he got down here without falling down the stairs and breaking all his bones," continued the woman. "Saying nothing the whole while but 'Laurent, Laurent'! Ain't no Laurent here, I says, have some dinner instead. But he sits down, straight past a bench, and keeps at it from the ground: 'I've just come from the country, go fetch Laurent!' I tells him, 'What d'you need Laurent for so bad, look at yourself, you great big bag of bones, you don't need no Laurent, you need some beef stew...'

"Who is Laurent?"

"The old landlord, Babet's brother-in-law. The tavern went to Babet to cover a gambling debt. He only brought me here two weeks ago for the first time. Took me out of my old establishment. I says, 'But what about my pots?' And he laughs and says, 'Of course, no doing without them, the cellar is stocked to feed a lot of hungry customers."

"Well, this specimen must not have had wind of the transaction yet," said the man. "No Laurent here no more."

They fell silent. The trellis hid them from Valjean's sight. Valjean tilted his ear forward and strained to hear more.

" _Tiens_! look at this, then!" finally said the man, softer. "What do you think?"

There was a pause.

"He did say he just came back from the country," said the woman, fresh doubt in her voice. "D'you think he meant our kind of  _country_? This is too fancy a trinket for his kind. He must've lifted it off someone."

"And probably some other things besides, which is how he came to be so drunk." The man sounded pleased with his own reasoning. "Hocked some loot and did some celebrating. There! See? See the writing on the lid?"

"I can't read that."

"Nor I. It's not French. And this fellow speaks French all right - better French than my cousins back in Auvergne, especially after they've tied on a few. He's from down south, I knew his accent right away - heard enough of that accent from guards in Toulon. And this box is inscribed in German or Dutch. So he must've lifted it off a foreigner."

Valjean heard a faint clink, as though the man were delicately trying to ring some sort of metal for purity.

"A solid little piece of white*!" said the man with envy. "Don't think I've ever seen such a pretty snuff-box as this. Look at this filigree work: the oak-leaves and the laurels and what-not... I've got half a mind to keep it for myself."

"I'd leave it in his pocket where you found it, Barre-Carosse," said the woman. "If he's a fanandel, 't ain't good manners to  _rinse out_  one's own."

"Wise enough," said the man. "Don't shit where you eat and all that."

"We better help him inside," said the woman. "He looks like death warmed over already, and it's been fixing to rain all evening. I'll get a fire going."

"Right then. Get his other arm. H-hhup!"

Valjean watched the two of them maneuver Javert's lanky, uncooperating form into the tavern. The door was left to swing half open behind them.

Well, thought Valjean, he got to where he wanted to be. Now he'll wait for Patron-Minette to show up. Presumably, his younger brother among them.

Valjean tried to imagine what Javert's brother might look like. From the recesses of his memory, a vision manifested itself: Javert, in his old uniform of the  _adjutant-guarde-chiourme_ , young, brisk and dark from the southern sun, sitting on the ledge of a wall niche at the entrance to the barracks in Toulon. He leaned against the iron bars with his head tossed back. laughing in full voice at the antics of an effeminate old galley-slave in the red waistcoat and the green cap of a lifer. The lifer was offering his leg-irons to the roundsman for inspection, like Cinderella presenting her dainty foot to the Prince, holding up the hem of an imaginary gown in one hand and moaning, as if in near-swoon. The rest of his chain-gang laughed as well, but Javert – back then still  _Javertis_ , nicknamed for his habit of preemptively appending "I'm warning you" to every order he gave – laughed the loudest. The sergeants did not laugh. One of them gave the old comedian a robust shove in the ribs with his cudgel. Taken by surprise, the old man fell over, taking down the two other fellows chained to him as well. Javert had fallen right silent then, hopped off the ledge, walked up to the sergeant and dragged him off to the side by the sleeve, rattling, "Come, come, away, away! – trip one, trip another, the rest fall on their own, and by the time they all go through, half the day is gone..."

Valjean looked up at the black starless sky. The first small raindrops were already falling on his face. He thought suddenly of his own brother. He had not thought of him since he dreamt of him almost ten years ago on the night before denouncing himself at the assizes at Arras. It had been decades since they saw each other; as soon as age permitted it, Jacques Valjean left the village to find work elsewhere and never returned. Whatever had become of him? wondered Valjean. And what of my sister? And her little one, the one she still had with her in Paris thirty years ago? And the rest of the children? They are all grown men and women now, if they live. How many live? Where could they be?

Suddenly, Valjean became angry with himself. Half a score relatives, all lost and forgotten through the years like so many handkerchiefs, and not even sought after any more. And here was Javert, dragging himself out of sickbed to die by the side of his little brother, - for without backup, against a whole armed gang, it was sure death for them both.

Well! Three can stand firmer than two, decided Valjean and rose to take the stairs down into the ditch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *white - (slang) silver


	40. Chapter 40

"Halt!  _Qui vive_?" sounded the man's voice behind him.

Valjean, who had been descending the staircase backwards to avoid slipping into the mud, jumped to the ground from halfway and landed on both feet with a slight "hupp," like an acrobat performing a simple but visually impressive  _truc_.

"A fellow of one's own kind, Barre-Carosse," he said, massaging his thighs still faced away from the ruffian. "The devil! How slippery these stairs are in the rain!"

"That they are."

Valjean turned around and beheld a slight fellow a bit shorter than himself, attired in a worker's cap, a clerk's waistcoat, and canvas trousers worn out at the knees. His shoes, very poor, were held together with twine. Thick, round doctor's spectacles sat on his nose. Had he met Barre-Carosse casually in the street, Valjean would not have thought him capable of "coshing" anyone larger than a house fly.

"Who are you, comrade?" asked Barre-Carosse.

Instead of answering, Valjean craned his neck to look beyond the man's back.

"Well, that is odd," he said, as if to himself. "Gone! disappeared! fallen through the very ground!"

"You mean the fellow that came through earlier?" asked Barre-Carosse.

"Depends on the fellow," said Valjean. "What did he look like?"

"Very tall, very lean, very blond."

"And very drunk?"

"Soused to the gills."

"That's the specimen. We aimed to come together, but I lost him in the dark. Been wandering between the trees like an idiot in a maze hedge. He was meant to lead me here, you understand. The devil take this dark and this rain... Why, I almost fell in!"

"I as well!" Barre-Carosse laughed. "I'd thought it would be up there with all the others…"

"…Well, sure! How is one supposed to know it's a subterranean?" continued Valjean in the same aggrieved tone. "I ain't even been in a subterranean in two decades. I'd forgotten this shack was even here!"

"Sure! sure, sure. But it's best to keep these things out of the public eye. Baberet is a clever man."

Valjean squinted, taking care to exaggerate the grimace enough for Barre-Carosse to read it in the dim light of the reflector globe hanging by the tavern's front window.

"What did you call the man?" he said, loading his voice with suspicion.

"Baberet," said Barre-Carosse evenly. "Why, what's the matter?"

Valjean squinted further and stepped close enough to look Barre-Carosse deep in the guileless eyes.

"Art thou the  _mouton_?" He grasped Barre-Carosse by the collar. "'Baberet', indeed! Ha! The  _cognes_  taught thee poorly!"

Barre-Carosse smiled and clapped his hand over Valjean's.

"Peace!" he said, making to detach the fingers of steel from his person. Valjean held on. "It was a trial. Babet, of course."

"A trial!" exclaimed Valjean angrily, releasing the threadbare shirtfront. "Don't talk to me of trials! I see the  _raille_  everywhere lately! Don't play on my frayed nerves!"

"They will find him out, the  _mouton._ " Barre-Carosse bared a mouthful of chipped brown teeth. "They are close."

"'Close' don't stock the larder," grumbled Valjean, stepping back to sit heavily on one of the stairs. "Things are not good, you know? There is no business. I want work – I have a child to feed. Parbleu... One foot in the grave, and what have I got to my name? A leg that drags, and no work, and now the raille is on my tail again! Always there! Always nearby! Some days, one simply wants to lie down and die, be done with it all. Even out of the galleys, no repose; even out of chains, slavery!"

The genuine hurt suffusing Valjean's tirade must have impressed Barre-Carrosse. He stepped aside and made way, opening the door into the tavern and waving Valjean in.

The tavern, which was barely lit up by the window reflector globe and the fire of the kitchen stove, was a great deal larger than its ramshackle outside suggested. Most of it had been excavated from the hill itself. On one side, there was a bar and by the small window, a billiards table. The wood of the bar was worm-eaten; the green baize of the billiards table torn. There were no glasses or tin measures in evidence at the bar, nor any balls or cues by the billiards table. On the other side, half lost in the shadows, there were several small tables with garden chairs of wicker, with remnants of paint still noticeable on both, though one could not guess at the color.

By the kitchen stove, the woman was bustling with a pot of something that smelled surprisingly inviting: beef stew with fennel and carrots, Valjean's nose told him.

"'Line!" exclaimed Barre-Carosse. "Ey, Pauline! Here's another guest!"

Valjean quitted his cap.

"Who might you be, then?" asked the woman, looking up briefly from the stew she was stirring.

"Jean-the-jack," said Valjean.

"Never heard of you."

"That is good. I like not being heard of."

"Are you here to confer with the rest?" she asked.

"I'm here to do whatever gets asked of me," said Valjean seriously. She raised her eyes to him, then went back to stirring, apparently satisfied.

"Come, let's have a tipple before supper," offered Barre-Carosse, stumbling in the dark and catching hold of Valjean to right himself. An opened bottle of wine already stood on one of the tables.

As they sat down, Valjean took note of someone lying on the long bench along the opposite wall, so deep in the shadows that he was almost invisible. It was a very large man, his arms crossed on his chest. He appeared to be in deep sleep.

It was not Javert.

"Last bottle they had," said Barre-Carosse. "The rest is in casks."

The woman brought out two small, unwashed glasses, and Barre-Carosse toasted "the evening's endeavor".

The wine was surprisingly good, but Valjean drank it without pleasure. "Where the devil is that sot?" he grumbled, looking around.

"Your pal? He's down in the cellar." Barre-Carosse nodded towards a heavy, half-open wooden door. "Said he wanted to 'scope out the premises'. Go to him if you want."

Valjean went to the door and saw steps of stone leading down into the pitch black. How far down the stairs went, he could not discern.

"Got a spare boogie?" he asked his host.

"Oh, you don't need one," said Barre-Carosse, who had come up behind him. "There's a rail to grip. Besides, there ought to be light down there already – your friend took a candle down with him. Has it gone out?"

"Apparently," said Valjean, straining his eyes.

"Bah! impossible!" exclaimed Barre-Carosse. "Look closer!"

And with all his might, he shoved Valjean down the stairs.


	41. Chapter 41

Ordinarily, a shove from a man that size might have wobbled Valjean but no more than that: his bulk and the sea legs he had acquired in Toulon gave him a steadiness and balance unusual even in a man half his age. However, ordinarily Valjean would not be standing on smooth stone stairs made slippery with rainwater and muddy clay.

Barre-Carosse's shove sent him flying into the dark.

In a desperate effort not to count every step with his skull, Valjean put forward his hands. Darkness rolled him like a lawn bowl, dashed him against the wall, and finally tossed him onto the stones of the cellar floor.

As he caught his breath, Valjean became aware of a soft thumping noise coming from the cellar corner ahead and to the left. Valjean gained his knees and felt around, thinking back to his adventure through the sewer. All things being known in comparison, the cellar was not one tenth so horrible a place. The floor was of cold dirty stone, moist and littered here and there with straw. Valjean began to make his way forward on his hands and knees.

"Javert?" he called out softly.

"Still here," came the ironic voice.

Valjean recalled the split-second of meager light that had fallen into the cellar before the door was slammed shut behind him. He had seen several casks along the wall by the stairway, and several large crates and large bundles of rubbish further on. He crawled in the direction of the crates.

The soft thumping – or was it slapping? - noise got incrementally louder. Within seconds, Valjean ran into an obstacle: rough-shod feet.

"Bravo," drawled Javert's voice from the right. "Bravo and  _bis_! Encore!"

"Are you all right?" asked Valjean. "What's that noise?"

The sound picked up tempo. "Me, doing my utmost to applaud you. Beg your pardon that my efforts are somewhat constrained."

Javert lay stretched out against the wall with his head in the corner on a pile of straw. Valjean knelt by his side and put out his right hand. His fingers curled around thick ropes.

Valjean felt dull rage rise in him. "Are you hurt?" he asked.

"Not a bit," said Javert smugly. "Unlike you, I had the sense to come down here on my two feet instead of rolling arse over tit like a street clown."

Ignoring the jibe, Valjean felt along Javert's body. Ropes bound his arms to his chest and his wrists in front, - Javert had been clapping with only the tips of his fingers.

"Did they tie up your legs as well?"

"They did indeed," said Javert with perverse satisfaction. "They were thorough, to the best of their limited ability. Or him, rather. Guelemer. A gent both rather thorough and rather limited."

"You make as though this was your plan all along: to be bound and tossed into a wine cellar like a sack of potatoes."

"Far from it. I never had any intention of being tossed. I descended here of my own volition."

"What in God's name for?"

Instead of an answer, Javert wriggled his body into a sitting position against one of the crates.

"Let's put that aside for a spell. Let us think instead about you," he said. "I gave you a direct order to stay put. You disobeyed."

"I couldn't let you go to meet your death alone."

"So you decided to meet it with me?" Javert sighed melodramatically. "And they say chivalry is dead."

Then, without a word or sound of warning, he fell over sideways into Valjean's lap.

"What's wrong?" asked Valjean worriedly, guiding Javert's head into his lap with both hands. 

A tiny sliver of light now percolated into the cellar from underneath the massive steel-bound oak door. It must have been this meager illumination that now allowed Valjean to see Javert's wide gray eyes glimmering up at him. Then again, one could not entirely discredit the possibility that Javert's eyes simply phosphoresced in the dark, like the eyes of a night-bird or a cat.

"Are you all right?" asked Valjean, his nose wrinkling. Barre-Carosse had not lied: Javert reeked of spirits.

"I think the better question would be whether you are all right," said Javert. "That was some tumble."

"Everything seems to be intact. It was a lucky fall."

"Thank God for small mercies. But tell me, what did you expect to accomplish by coming here?"

"I could well ask you the same," pointed out Valjean. "You ended up in the same place I did, except bound hand and foot with cattle-rope."

"So? what of it?" asked Javert peevishly.

"So, what do you hope to do now? How do you expect to help your brother from down here?"

"Don't presume to know what I hope to do, or how I hope to do it," huffed Javert, bathing Valjean's nose with alcoholic vapors.

"And you are drunk," admonished Valjean.

"Not a bit," said Javert with dignity.

Valjean said nothing.

"All right, perhaps a bit," allowed Javert. "Most of it I just swirled around my mouth. It was for the smell, you understand."

"Even if they think you incapacitated with drink, and you surprise them, how did you hope to fight them all?"

"Well, it's all immaterial now," said Javert. "My plans hinged on being alone, which now I am not. A change of plans is therefore required. Since you are here, I might as well make use of you."

"As a pillow?" Valjean flexed his stomach muscles under Javert's head.

"That also." Javert wriggled up to settle against Valjean's chest and set his feet on top of a crate, like a lounging stevedore. "You are abnormally well suited for it. Not too hard, not too soft. I feel like Goldilocks."

Valjean flicked a lock of Javert's blond wig, which was miraculously still on him. "Not so far off the mark," he said with a smile.

Javert exhaled a hum through his nostrils and lay his head on Valjean sternum.

"We will be here a while," he said, his low voice rolling through Valjean's chest. "An hour, maybe more."

"Good. We'll have time to think of how to free you."

"Let's not worry about that just yet," said Javert cryptically.

"One would almost think you enjoyed being bound."

Javert gave a small snort of laughter.

"Well, if you don't want me to untie you, how do you suggest we pass the time?" asked Valjean, puzzled.

Javert snorted again, harder. His shoulders began to shake against Valjean's stomach.

"What?" asked Valjean.

"Nothing," said Javert finally, with a sort of resignation. "Nothing at all. Forgive me."

"No matter when or where we meet, always you mock me," said Valjean with a smile of his own.

"I am not mocking you," said Javert. "I am mocking myself."

"For what?"

Javert wriggled further upright to lean against the damp wall rather than against Valjean. "I know how we will pass the time," he said instead of answering.

"How?"

"We shall play petanca."


	42. Chapter 42

"Petanca?" asked Valjean. "Lawn bowls? In a dark cellar, with you tied hand and foot? And no actual bowls?"

"Yes," said Javert. "It will only have to be a metaphoric game of bowls."

"I do not understand, but all right," said Valjean placidly.

"You don't understand my offer, yet you agree anyway?" said Javert, amused. "This is how many men get dragged into criminal acts, you know - through mindless acquiescence to their pals."

"As if you could mean anything criminal," said Valjean. "I trust you."

The words seemed to sap Javert's desire to tease him further.

"Perhaps you shouldn't," he said. "I'm not the man you think you know."

"Not the man I once thought I knew, certainly," said Valjean.

Come now, he thought immediately to himself - is that really true? It might have been true back in Montreil-sur-Mer, where Inspector Javert seemed just another dyspeptic functionary of the state, with occasional flashes of genuine nastiness. But was the Javert he encountered in the Gorbeau hovel last winter, the one he had heard joke and banter with the men he arrested, so very different from the man who leaned on his shoulder now? Who was Javert then, really? the man who stomped his feet at Fantine as she lay dying, or the man who stood surrounded by seven armed bandits and calmly talked them into a peaceful surrender?

And you yourself? asked a merciless voice in his head. Are you the man who robbed little Gervais of his hard-earned forty sous and threatened him with a cudgel, or the man who sat up all night with Cosette when she had scarlet fever?

I was one, but am now the other, answered Valjean.

So accord him at least the same consideration, continued the voice. Or do you think what he did to Fantine was so much worse than what you did to Gervais? Fantine had minutes more to live, hours at most. He may have robbed her of those last scraps of miserable time, but what of it? Would she have been happier had she lived through them? Her daughter would not have been by her side either way. But you! you robbed a little boy of two days' salary. What if that money had been intended to buy bread or medicines? Or pay down an overdue debt to keep his father out of jail? Or what if your act, by example, turned the boy against honest labor altogether and towards robbery? Who art thou to sit in judgment of a policeman whom you once saw get cross with an unhappy prostitute?

"You've gone very quiet," said Javert.

"I was enumerating all the things I know about you," said Valjean. "They don't add up to much."

"Shall I leave you to it?"

"Not unless you wish to."

"Shall we play then?"

Valjean felt himself smile. "Sure! You called the first turn, I believe."

"Don't you want to know first where the jack is? I have already thrown it."

"Where is the jack?" Valjean asked warily.

"The jack is in the middle of an understanding."

"An understanding?"

"Exactly. Right in the heart of it."

"So we are to get as close to it as possible?"

"Right. That is petanca, no? You have played it before?"

"The real petanca, or this game of yours?"

"The real one."

"Is that your first bowl?" asked Valjean shrewdly.

"I'm just assessing the distance," smirked Javert.

"No, I have never played it. I have seen others play, but I've never had the time. And once I had the time, I found I had no friendly acquaintances to play with. Yourself?"

"Less often than I would've liked, but occasionally in my youth in Provence, yes. And a few times since."

"How many  _boules_ do we each get?"

"Three each, as per the rules. That should see us through the bulk of the waiting. Also, three is a very appealing number."

Valjean felt rather than saw the man stretch. "Although if we have the time, we can go for more. On this point, I am not dogmatic."

"All right. You go first."

Javert was silent for a moment.

"The girl who lives with you," he started haltingly. "I know she is the daughter of that _dro..._ that dead public girl, Fantine. And that you bought her out from the peasants to whom she entrusted her. That is why Jondrette had come after you last winter - to shake you down for more money. What I've been wondering this whole time is this: are you in fact her father?"

Valjean sighed wistfully. "I am not. She calls me 'father', but I am only her guardian."

Beside him, Javert stiffened and sat a little taller. "Still a mystery, then. Consider the bowl an overshot. Your turn."

"What is a mystery? Her parentage?"

"No, no… Well, yes, but not the main mystery. Never mind. Your turn."

"What's the main mystery?"

"That will have to be my second bowl," said Javert.

"I allow you a do-over."

"Rules are rules. Take your turn."

"I demand from you a do-over."

Javert barked out a humorless laugh.

"How unsurprising. As always, old Jean Valjean is not one for rules."

Suddenly, Javert swung his feet off the crate and onto the floor, rolled deftly on his stomach, and leaned on his elbows, piercing Valjean with his glowing eyes.

"Even the rules of an idle amusement," he continued with new fierceness. " _Nom d'un chien_ , even when absolutely nothing is at stake!"

Valjean held his gaze. Finally, Javert broke their eye contact, lowered his chin into the cup of his tied-up palms and fixed his stare on a tuft of straw in front of him.

"My point was not overshot, it seems, but severely undershot," he said with sad irony, speaking at the straw. "Well. As they say, _boule devant, boule d'argent_ *."

For all of Javert's suddenly soured mood, Valjean felt like he had just been severely outplayed. The worst of it was that he could not understand how precisely he lost, or what he lost - only that he lost.

It was naked instinct to retaliate hurt for hurt that pushed the question off his tongue.

"My turn, then. Who was Isaac to you, in truth?"

\--------------------------------

*boule devant, boule d'argent - "a bowl in the front is a money bowl". In petanque, a front-positioned bowl is easy to maneuver closer to the jack, where is a bowl that's overshot can only get farther away from it.


	43. Chapter 43

He regretted it immediately, but the deed was done. Without moving a muscle on his face, Javert splayed his fingers against his eyes. His shoulders began quivering.

A surge of self-hatred washed over Valjean.

"Forgive me," he pleaded. "I don't know what came over me - some monstrous impulse - I can't account for it. My dear friend, I beg your pardon!"

The man did not look up, even at being called 'dear friend.' Valjean put a hand on his shoulder. Javert did not seem to notice it.

'What a miserable old fool I am,' thought Valjean, kneading gently.

The shoulder stilled under his ministrations. All of a sudden, Javert turned to face Valjean and grasped his hand with both his tied ones, like a playful cat.

"You crossed the line," he said.

It was then that Valjean understood that what he mistook for weeping was in fact a paroxysm of Javert's peculiar soundless laughter. At first Javert's lack of distress relieved him, and he let his hand be pressed. Then he felt foolish and tried to withdraw it. Javert held on tightly.

"Why do you wish to know about Isaac?"

There was no hitch in his voice, no change of inflection. No sign that just hours ago, that name came to his lips only in the throes of delirium.

"I wish to know nothing that you do not wish to disclose," said Valjean firmly. "I have no desire to pry into your private vices."

Javert's lips thinned. " _Dame!_ this is why you crossed the line," he hissed, squeezing Valjean's hand now almost painfully. "You ask with foreknowledge of the answer, and you ask only to pass judgment. Well, you may not! I do not allow it!"

"I understand," said Valjean.

"You understand nothing," said Javert coldly and pushed Valjean's hand away. "Bowl again."

"No penalty?"

"Let us say you stumbled. The  _boule_ has been re-collected. Step back into the circle and bowl again."

"All right. You say you have been working for Vidocq this whole time. Then how come he did not know that you were at the barricade on Rue de Chanverie during the insurrection?"

Even in the dark, Valjean could see Javert's eyes widen.

"Do you mean to say he knows now?"

"Yes."

"From you?"

"He asked about the day you found me in the sewers," said Valjean helplessly.

"And you recounted everything?!"

"Only from the moment I saw you tied to the post in the wine-house.."

Javert stuffed his wrist-bound ropes into his mouth and groaned around them, like a soldier undergoing a battlefield amputation.

"I'm sorry," said Valjean. "I seem to have committed another fault."

Javert gnawed at the ropes some more, like a dog, then released them.

"The fault is mine," he rasped. "I failed to instruct you. Oh, what a botch! I will never hear the end of this now. I had asked Gisquet to keep the assignment from him – I did not expect to…"

Javert fell silent.

"But why were you keeping it secret at all?"

Javert clicked his tongue in irritation. Finally, he said:

"I am starting to wonder if the tremendous cleverness I have always attributed to you wasn't simply a tremendous run of luck. Do you mean to say you still understand nothing?"

"I've been hearing nothing but riddles from both you and Vidocq all night!" exclaimed Valjean, exasperated. "You are right though - I am not tremendously clever, or at all clever, even. I'm just an old peasant who is good with his hands."

"False modesty doesn't become actors, even old ones."

"If I am an actor, at least I'm a principal actor," parried Valjean. "You seem to play out your own life behind closed curtains, tugging and pulling at stage machinery."

"All police agents live outside the pale of society. The very word 'police' makes respectable folks spit. Secrets are our  _modus operandi_. This surprises you?"

"Be that as it may, I've always considered you an open and honest man."

This sounded so much like an insult that Valjean instantly corrected himself: "I mean to say, a plain and uncomplicated sort of honest man. One who conceals nothing about himself, even in minor matters."

"I mostly don't, outside of cover necessary to complete specific police tasks. Especially in minor matters. But just because I don't _hide_ things doesn't mean people _see_ them."

Javert leaned his head against the wall and sighed, looking up into the vault of the cellar.

"You bowled well," he said. "I shall tell you. Not everything, but enough. Enough even to answer your previous, more impertinent question. He that has ears, let him hear. Have you got ears?"

"In decent enough working order."

"And what of the brain behind them?"

"It will catch up."

"In that case, settle in for some tragic declamation. A modern-day take on something Hellenic, with elements of Homer and Pindar."


	44. Chapter 44

"Do you recall the blond who led the men on our barricade? Handsome young fellow, with 'over-my-dead-body' airs of Leonidas leading the Spartans?"

Valjean did and said so.

"For the past four or five years, he had been the leader of a certain club: young idlers and students, mostly, with a working-man or two in the mix, for flavor. They numbered under twenty, to remain in the white officially. However, they made sure to communicate well with other clubs of their sort. They gathered regularly and talked a lot of fancy nonsense to each other. This brought them to the attention of the authorities."

"Before 1830, they dreamed of leading a Revolution; after 1830, they dreamed of leading another Revolution, the one effected having evidently fallen into heresy. This is a distressing habit with Revolutions."

"In truth, they were more harmless than they considered themselves. They tended to keep their attentions on their own kind - the students, the idle young men without profession. The unambitious third or fourth sons of the bourgeois, in short. Those fellows were always a headache for the municipal police, because they started a lot of brawls. But they were never really of much concern to the politicals, because there were not very many of them, and they kept mostly to themselves. The Polytechnic stragglers like to think they make revolutions, but they just bob to the surface when the waves of popular discontent crest. The real dangers were judged to reside with the men permanently installed in the workers' fabourgs. The rebellion bore this out: it was mostly manned by construction workers. Life is a funny thing. A royal dynasty can stand or be brought low depending on whether a striving landlord's loan becomes unserviceable."

"But let us return to our muttons. Or mutton, rather. There was one, of course. His particular assignment was to report on this club leader of ours. Let us call the club-leader Achilles, for that was his code-name with the political spies. He was a figure of great interest to them, because he had the permanent air of a man going about dreadfully important business and a weakness for ominous discourse. This made him excellent fodder for plentiful and colorful reports. Political police is a big expensive machine employing a great deal of small cheap cogs; it is as poor in brains as it is rich in eyes. At one point, there were no fewer than three paid agents documenting our Achilles at once."

"Two of them are irrelevant to the story - they were holdovers from Delavau, one a Jesuit tool and the other a first-class scoundrel. They produced information of great volume but little value. It is the third man who is of interest to us. Let us call him Patroclus."

"Unlike the other two, he was good at his job." Javert attempted to gesture with his bound wrists in his excitement. "Being of appropriate age and class, he managed to join the society our Achilles presided over. Or at very least, he ingratiated himself to them enough not to be shown the door whenever they got to talking about guns, munitions, distribution lists, and other interesting things. He understood their codes; he had knowledge of price-lists and suppliers. Twice he was able to pass along the locations of pawn-shops that doubled as warehouses for rifles, lead, and bullet-molds. He was no  _mouchard._ A spy informs on suspicion, out of malice or for money, without proof that can stand up to impartial examination. It was what I did with you in Montreil-sur-Mer, for all that I was right. It is a contemptible, vile, maleficent practice. A proper agent does not inform until he is certain that he has both uncovered the truth and can prove its case to a magistrate."

"I am usually wary of spies who sink this deeply into the mire they are helping to drain, but even I had to acknowledge his mastery. Patroclus was a superb agent. His reports were replete with actionable information. Moreover, he managed to keep his nose clean the entire time he was on assignment. If Achilles gave him this or that minor assignment, Patroclus never completed it. His obligation to the law would not allow him to become an active accomplice in armed rebellion. Yet he concealed these small betrayals so well that he aroused no suspicion among the club members. Eventually, Achilles came to consider him irresponsible and frivolous, but he was still judged harmless enough to be tolerated at the group's meetings."

"The task before Patroclus was a difficult one. He had no specific truth to uncover, and so his assignment had no scripted endgame. He was recruited after the 1830 Revolution as part of the police mission to prevent another one. The particulars were to be figured out on the way. Sometimes they were; often they were not. It did not help that the political police, the Security Brigade, the municipal police, and the soldier guard all furthered this mission without interacting. Like the planets orbiting the Sun, they passed each other on occasion, but beyond that, the right hand knew not what the left hand was up to."

"Patroclus had been initially assigned to the political police. It was by then-Prefect Treilhard, if you'll credit it. (Ah, you probably don't know – Treilhard's Christian name was Achille.) Vidocq spotted him in the ranks of the politicals, reckoned him for a crafty up-and-comer, and offered him additional pay to be copied on his reports. The fellow agreed – his cover at the club demanded an air of profligacy, and he had a sister to support, a feeble-minded girl who required a live-in nurse. Patroclus and I thus made acquaintance through Vidocq."

"The fellow was tremendous at  _savate_  and stick-fencing. We began to meet regularly in Casseux's  _salle_  to spar. For two years, I watched as he and Casseux argued about style and techniques - Casseux insisted on  _parades_ , Patroclus insisted on dodging, that sort of thing. At the same time, I could see that Patroclus was losing his health to his assignment, which necessitated more time spent around wine than his willpower could handle. By the end of those two years, he had deteriorated from a gymnast into a stumbling drunk. Pissed-up* eventually proclaimed him a lost cause and kicked him out of the  _salle_. Lecour was just opening his own establishment; Patroclus dashed thither but was likewise rebuffed. Without a salubrious passtime, Patroclus lost his bearings completely."

"A point came when he ceased to report for duty. This was not unusual with political spies, - they are not the most disciplined lot - but for him this was an unwelcome novelty. Vidocq ordered me to locate him, as I knew all his favorite haunts. I found him blind drunk in a dance-hall at Barriere du Combat, loaded him into a cab, and took him over to my place."

Behind the cellar door, something shattered, and the sliver of light under the door dimmed. Javert fell silent. Both men looked at the door, half expecting it to open. When it did not, Javert pursed his mouth to the side comically. His hands, which he had been moving subtly side to side to ease circulation, stilled in front of his chest.

"Someone broke the lamp in the window," he diagnosed. "This is heartening."

"Why?"

"At least one person is getting clumsy with drink. That would make things easier."

Another minute passed. Finally, Javert shook his head slightly.

"Where was I?" he asked.

* * *

 

 

* - Michel Casseux, also known as  _le Pisseux_  (1794–1869), opened the first establishment in 1825 for practicing and promoting savate, the French martial art of kick-boxing.


	45. Chapter 45

"You had just found Patroclus," said Valjean. He was becoming engrossed in the story.

"Right," said Javert, keeping his eyes on the door. "That's right. So, Patroclus and I rode back to my place. In the fiacre, he came apart at the seams. He cried out, thrashed, moaned all sorts of nonsense. I don't think he even recognized me. I dragged him upstairs and dumped him onto a camp-bed. He slept like a stone for ten hours and woke up almost sober. I gave him some bread, poured some coffee into him, and demanded he tell me everything. He refused. I insisted. He refused again. I threatened to have Vidocq turn him out. At that, he relented. It turned out to be a banal story: he was in love, and he was unrequited. I advised him to speak with Vidocq, as he was ever the expert in the ways of the feminine heart. And at this, Patroclus suddenly began to weep."

"It startled me. I had never seen him weep before. Between the sobs, Patroclus managed to put across that his was a love so impossible and monstrous that he could not speak to anyone about it – not Vidocq, not a relative, not a confessor, no one."

"This was becoming curious. I offered myself as a confidante. He wouldn't have it. I pressed him to talk. I told him there was little he could tell me that I would find impossible or monstrous. That in my years as a chain-gang guard in Toulon, a  _grognard_  in Russia, and a police agent in Paris, I'd seen things that he couldn't conjure up in any absinthe-induced nightmare. And that while I might have limited personal knowledge of women, I've seen love fell others often enough to know what's what."

"Eventually, I pulled the truth out of him. It would have been easier to pull out a wisdom tooth. The story was not as banal as I first thought: his unrequited love was the pretty blond leader of their club. To make a bad thing worse, he had never suspected such inclinations in himself before, and he was not taking it well. And to make it altogether unbearable, he now had a stark conflict of interest. He could no longer in good conscience continue writing reports on the man, yet he needed the money he earned by those reports to support himself and his family."

"By that time, we all knew for certain that when trouble started, their club would strive to be on the frontline. Patroclus knew it, Vidocq knew it, Gisquet knew it, and I certainly knew it. It was only a matter of time. Cholera was raging. It was perfectly clear that something will come of it: if not a revolution, then at least an uprising, and if not that, then at least an armed skirmish or two. The people's panic demanded blood. There was nothing conceivable that Patroclus could do to stop this. Yet now he wanted my advice."

"What did you tell him?" asked Valjean.

Javert raised his eyebrows and sighed.

"That I had no good news to impart. That he knew better than anyone that there was not enough real revolutionary ardor in the workers and not enough weapons for them in the armories. That despite all the efforts of the Republican agitators, the majority of Parisians were not so gullible as to believe the police were poisoning the public wells with cholera, and they would not take up arms against them on that account. That the Republicans had no chance of taking the city without army sympathies, and they had practically none - a few foolhardy fellows in the artillery, but that would hardly help. That at least three squadrons of carabineers have already been guaranteed in support to the National Guard on the day things get hot. The whole thing was going to be a botched mess. I reminded him that even if his  _bel ami_  Achilles were arrested now instead of getting shelled to smithereens or skewered by the National Guard, he'd be  _mowed down_  for treason. Possibly – possibly! – if the monarch was in a good enough humor to extend a commutation! – his lawyers might win for him a life sentence at the galleys. In Achilles' case, this would simply mean a slow ignominious death rather than a fast one. He would not be brought to a sanatorium like Toulon, where a lifer can eat his beans in relative peace for twenty, thirty, forty years. Most likely he would end up in Rochefort. And I had observed our Achilles at close range. The boy had the constitution of a tea-rose. In the Rochefort swamps, he'd wither in six months."

"I reminded Patroclus of all this and then gave him the only advice I could. If he was truly in love, he could arrange for a family pension with Gisquet, withdraw from all planning of the revolt, obtain a transfer to another assignment, and finally, when the time came, follow Achilles into the fray and perish with him."

Valjean's felt his heart contract painfully.

"He laughed at first," said Javert. "An unhappy little laugh. He said I was just a  _cogne_ ; that he should've known better than to be fooled by our friendly relations; that his kind – he was already speaking of  _his kind_ now! – that his kind and the police are natural enemies; and that I would probably put them all to death myself had I the authority."

"So I began to laugh as well. It was all just too absurd. I told him then that I was not speaking from authority but from experience. If he was not mistaking infatuation for love, then it would better for him not to survive his beloved. That was my verdict. He pointed out that my claim to experience was silly, as I was still alive, in good health, and even laughed on occasion. I told him that sometimes, one has no choice but to remain alive, because others would have it so. But he was not like me. As long as he arranged for his family to be provided for, he was a free man."

"'In fact,' I told him, 'if we use this chance wisely, we might contrive to dispatch two birds with one stone. I can speak to Gisquet about the both of us and arrange our pensions myself. I have more sway with him than you; he is obligated to me for some past services. I need six hundred francs in cash to cover a debt. It is far less than what I could procure, but it will suffice to square me with my creditor. You have done well over the past two years. I could secure for your cousin fifteen or twenty francs a month from the Prefecture, to continue for five years; Vidocq can supplement this with something from his own coffers. He does not refuse cases like yours. Then when the Republicans make their move, both of us can march out with Achilles to win our freedom.'

He goggled at me.

'Are you a Republican?' he asked.

'Don't talk nonsense,' I answered.'

'Freedom from what, then, if not tyranny?'

'From unhappiness,' I said.

'I understand myself, but what have you got to be unhappy about?'

So I decided: to hell with it, I'll tell him.

'Say, big R - big P, rather - how long have you been in love with your  _bousingot_?'

'I don't know. Looking back on it, a long time. Two years, perhaps. I just didn't know it.'

'Well, some part of you must've known - you've been drowning your sorrows in wine practically since you met him.'

'As you can see.'

'So you expect you will be beside yourself with grief when he dies?' I asked. 'Despite never having got so much as a glance in your direction from him, to say nothing of more interesting things?'

He flushed. Just went beet-red all over. It was an odd sight to see. He wore his mask of the cynic too well sometimes.

'Now imagine this little castle in the air,' said I. 'Imagine that he did, in fact, love you back. That the two of you came to an agreement of sorts and lived together. Like the blood-brothers of old days:  _un pain, un vin, une bourse*_. And yet not quite like brothers. The nature of your blissful union was rather impious. Suffice it to say that every morning, one of you would curse the other's pointy elbows as he crawled out of your single bed to go to work. Which one of you? Both, in turn. His work was in Hotel Dieu, yours was all over town. His shifts lasted fourteen hours, from six in the morning to eight at night; yours started whenever there was need of you and ended whenever you could be spared. On rare days when your schedules coincided, you had coffee and eggs together by the window."

'The true character of your relationship was not a secret. At first people whispered about you, but by and by the gossip stopped being interesting. You were both busy young men of profession; you were never lewd or drunk in public; you always settled your bills on time. This earned the two of you good standing with all the shop-keepers, and from there with the rest of the neighborhood. Soon you were lending and borrowing two sous for milk from the neighbors, inquiring after their children, and holding forth in the wine-shop downstairs about the rubbish on the street and the broken glass in the street-lamps. The _modistes_  working on the fourth floor thought it colossal fun to occasionally come down to your flat and ask you to help them lace up their dresses.'

'Sometimes there would be trouble in the street. When it was a matter of peace-keeping, you were expected to intercede before the soldier patrol was hailed. When it was a medical matter, your consort was on call for everyone. You broke up the fights; he bandaged the wounds. If work kept one of you away from home for longer than usual, the portress brought the other supper and fussed over him.'

'It became a running joke with the men of your acquaintance that surely you must be the happiest of them all: no woman's nagging or children's squealing constantly in your ears. And they were right. You were by far the happiest. On Sundays, you ran in the street like an overgrown idiot, kicking a leather ball with the neighborhood lads, while your consort watched from the open window, calling fouls against you and pelting you with roasted chestnuts. You lived well. There were not enough hours in the day.'

'One frosty evening, the two of you were returning from the New Year's Day supper at the house of a mutual friend, your arms around each other, tipsy and laughing like schoolboys. Suddenly, a group of three men with hands in their pockets appear in an alley to your right. You recognized two of them. Your squad nabbed them some months prior – one for armed robbery, the other for murder. They were supposed to be in La Force, awaiting trial. Someone failed to keep a close enough eye on the latch, and they did not stay put.'

'A monstrous maneuver was executed. On command from the fellow who had gone down for murder, six guns were pulled out of pockets and raised. On second command, all six guns were fired at once.'

'Your memories of the evening end there. Later you were told that the porter of the building across the street, a veteran like yourself, rushed out to your aid with a hunting rifle. But by then the assassins were long gone, and he only found the two of you, entangled in a huge pool of bloody slush. You received a single nick to the ribs. Your kind friend had his entire chest shredded. Five out of six bullets.'

'You were a terrifying sight. Your mouth was covered in blood - his blood, not your own. He was gushing blood from his chest and his mouth, and you had been kissing him, or perhaps trying to breathe for him. When the porter tried to pry you from his body, so that it might be taken away to be washed, you howled and struck the good man in the face…'"

Javert's voice trailed off. He let go of the rope end he had been fiddling with, swallowed once and closed his eyes.

* * *

 

* _un pain, un vin, une bourse_  - fr., "one bread, one wine, one purse." In late medieval France, a certain type of legal contract called "affrèrement" - roughly translated as 'brotherment' - was sometimes drawn up between two men. The newly-made "brothers" pledged to live together sharing all their property in common and designate each other as heirs. Some scholars speculate that "affrèrements" were often used by homosexual couples in place of Church-approved marriage unions to give their relationship social and legal standing.


	46. Chapter 46

"I told Patroclus more things besides, but you do not need to hear them," Javert continued, his eyes still closed. "He remained silent the whole time I spoke – a rare thing for him. At last, he got off my bed, put on his shoes and left. He forgot his hat. I learned later that week that he spoke to Gisquet about the pensions himself. He was assured of them, on condition that he remain engaged and continue his reports. They did continue. But they were no longer his. Patroclus crawled into a bottle and did not crawl back out. The reports were all written by me."

"It was not easy. I had no passport to the inner sanctum of their club. So I worked from the outside. I stood in line for milk in the Sorbonne quarter and in the quarter of the Markets in hopes of overhearing chatter. I bribed gamins to run errands for me at the café and the wine shop where they gathered. Eventually, I turned to workers' associations. My face became well-known in cantinas, like the one by the Fontainebleau barrier, where we were last night. I began to walk about in a short jacket over a vest, so as not to stand out. A ridiculous notion. They knew me on sight and laughed. 'Where's your big coat and hat, Monsieur Javert?' they cried. I overheard little, but one of those tips panned out lucky: some more bullet-molds were found. And so, Patroclus was not suspected of sleeping on the job."

"By late May, panic that the police were poisoning public wells with cholera ran more rampant than cholera itself. Mobs began to congregate and strike out against men who fell under the suspicion of belonging to the police. Lynch law infected the fabourgs."

"I continued to frequent workers' halls all the while. No one lifted a finger against me, though most everyone knew that I was a policeman. Perhaps they simply could not imagine Inspector Javert skulking around at night and poisoning public fountains with choleric distillations. Occasionally, someone would suggest that I was there as a spy, but the idea was shouted down. I sat at my table alone, carried no notebook, did not attempt to enter into conversation with anyone, resisted attempts at conversation by others, and spent most of the time looking into my plate or my glass, not faces. It was judged that I was only there to eat dinner, and if I were a spy, then I was a lazy and incapable spy, and as such, I ought to be allowed to continue bleeding the  _Cigogne*_  of my salary in peace."

"On June fifth, when Lamarque's hearse set out through the streets, I was at the Prefecture. The moment was perfect. I asked Gisquet for permission to go mingle with the "reds", assess their armaments, and report back in the evening. The task proved difficult to secure. Gisquet was reluctant. Apparently, Vidocq had already requested me to help him flush some game out of the  _tapis francs_  of Ile de la Cité that night. I insisted that the municipal police needed a man to observe the rebels up close. Gisquet remarked that it already had such a man: Patroclus was still officially with the rebels, and his standing assignment remained in effect. I reminded Gisquet that while Patroclus was clever, he was not the Hindu god Krishna, and could not contrive to be in several places at once. If he left the barricade in the middle of the night, the Republicans would notice and question his absence and make his re-entry tricky. A second man, one unknown to them, was needed to assist the first."

"Eventually, Gisquet relented. I asked him to keep this task from Vidocq for the time being. 'So that he might not be cross all day about being deprived of me for his adventures in the Cité,' I said. Gisquet agreed. That was all I needed. When the mob passed Rue de Billettes, I joined it and took a place on the barricade."

"And so you sat there, with an unloaded gun and your police card in your pocket, waiting to be discovered and put to death," murmured Valjean.

Javert opened his eyes again and looked at Valjean with suspicion.

"How did you know it was unloaded?" he asked.

"I didn't. It was an educated guess."

"A fine thing, education."

"You've certainly extended mine a fair ways tonight." Valjean heard bitterness in his own voice.

Javert shrugged minutely. "The questions came from you. You oughtn't have asked if you weren't prepared to hear the answers."

"In that you are right. I was not prepared."

"Oh! Well then! By the Holy Virgin's immaculate petticoats, allow me to extend my deepest and most contrite apologies to your inexhaustible deposits of virtue!" said Javert venomously.

"I meant that it never occurred to me that you were out on the barricade seeking martyrdom."

"Oh? And only that?"

"Only that."

Javert's temper abated.

"You must admit, Valjean, it was a solid plan. The only thing I did not anticipate was your appearance, but even that seemed at first to play in my favor. Oh! if only you knew what a surge of joy went through me when you asked Achilles if you could blow my brains out yourself! I was already beginning to fear that he might have an attack of magnanimity and simply leave me tied to the post for the soldiers to liberate. I was ready to thank God for you then. When you led me away into that alley... I could barely walk but oh, I was ready to fly! Then you took out the clasp-knife, and I thought: of course, he will use a  _surin_  instead of wasting a bullet. But then the distress of watching you cut away my ropes!.. of hearing you say: 'You are free'!.."

Javert gave a particularly violent full-body twitch against his ropes.

"I felt robbed, Valjean! I had done such a good job. I was going to die on duty. I provided for a legitimate means of extinguishing my debt. I gave good counsel to a fellow sufferer. By God, I earned that death! But then you saw fit to introduce yourself, once again, into a debacle that did not concern you. Another act of monstrous unasked-for goodness from Jean Valjean! You know, in Russia, they call such clumsy solicitousness a 'bear's favor.' That was what you rendered me with that act of mercy, Valjean – a bear's favor!"

Javert had talked himself back into a full-blown snit.

"And that was not the end of my bad luck! I was left alive, confused, angry as an imp of Satan dunked into the baptismal font – and in that condition, I then had to go and testify to Gisquet that that I owed my life and my escape to some National Guardsman named Fauchelevent! Did I know him? Why, of course not, monsieur le préfect!"

"Gisquet must have thought me mad. His eyebrows were performing the queerest calisthenics on his forehead while I talked. I had never lied to him before, and I was making a perfect hash of it. Halfway through my verbal report, I developed a stutter and had to excuse myself from his presence. I went to pace the  _salle des pas perdus_  to calm myself. My teeth clattered so loudly it echoed off the marble walls! I almost had a fit right there on the floor. When I was more certain that I would not fall over, I went back to Gisquet for re-assignment. He sent me to patrol the sewer exits. His way of sending me out for a calming walk. And then in the middle of the night, just as I was indeed beginning to calm down, distracted by playing at _jeu de loup_ with some scoundrel loitering around a sewer exit, up you come through the ground, like a goddamn jack-in-the-box! I said to myself: this is it!.. I'm done for!.. this is what madness feels like!.."

"What became of Patroclus?" interrupted Valjean.

"Well you should ask! Since he had no one to spoil his plans so inconsiderately, he succeeded in them."

"He is dead, then?"

"When the soldiers retreated, the police found him on the floor at Achilles' feet. The firing squad got them both in one blow."

Javert growled.

"Lucky sod! So much of my hard work went into that death! Goddamn thieves, both of you!"

Visibly enraged, the inspector slammed a shoulder against the wall behind him. He stilled for a moment, contemplating the wall intently, as though it had been the one to undermine his plans. Then he slammed into it again, with even more ferocity.

"So here is my second bowl, Valjean," he hissed at the wall. "How come that no matter where I go, there you are, ready to fuck things up for me? I work in Toulon, and there you are."

Another shove to the same spot.

"I leave Paris to go live in a quiet little town – and there you are!"

A few crumbs flaked and fell off the edge of the stone.

"I leave the quiet little town to return to Paris – and there you are!"

Valjean could have sworn he saw the stone move under Javert's last assault.

"I finally execute a plan to die honorably, every loose end tidied up – and there! you! fucking! are!"

With Javert's last curse and shove, a stone tile came dislodged and fell into Valjean's lap.

A secret chamber gaped in the wall.


	47. Chapter 47

Valjean stared distractedly at the hole in the wall. Once again, Javert managed to completely jumble up his thoughts. "What in the world is that?"

"That, my dear Valjean, is a suspicion confirmed," said Javert. The smugness on his face shone through the dark like a lamp. The enraged victim of fate was gone, and in his place was once again a sharp police agent. "That stone did not sit right with me. As it turns out, neither did it sit right with the wall. Would you kindly reach into the stash and tell me if it's full or empty?"

Valjean complied. "There's something in it." His fingers probed a firm yet yielding object. "A leather sack, I would guess."

"Hah!" exclaimed Javert in triumph. "Spectacular. Withdraw your hand, if you please. No offense meant, but I cannot allow you to handle evidence. Not just yet."

It was as if nothing of import had been said between them in the last half-hour. However, this time, Valjean refused to be distracted.

"This is all well and good, but as you like to say, let us return to our muttons. Do you honestly think that for the past thirty years, _I've_ been stalking _you_ around the country?"

"There are times when I do not know what to think," said Javert. "You have to admit, we travel extensively and yet meet improbably often. France is hardly a village pub."

"But why in God's name would I follow you?" Valjean raised his hands, as though calling Heavens to witness him. "All I've ever wanted in life was to stay as far, far away from… what are you doing?"

Javert had wriggled down the wall and onto the straw. His body was now performing slow, almost lascivious-looking undulations. Valjean was reminded of the python from Jardin des Plantes trying to force an entire rabbit down into her stomach.

"The time has come for me to slip out of this lace," said Javert through clenched teeth.

"You will never manage it without something sharp. Didn't you have a pen-knife on you?"

"I did."

"Well, use it!"

"I said that I did, not that I do."

"They took it, then?"

"Of course they took it. That's why I had it in the first place – for them to take."

"I don't understand."

Javert rolled his eyes.

"One searches a man. One finds a penknife. One takes it. One ties up the man."

His sentences were now forced out in short, irregular bursts of strained breath.

"One asks oneself: might he get out of the ropes? And one answers oneself: not now that I've taken away his knife."

"No matter," said Valjean, patting his pockets. "I have a special sou on me for just such an occasion."

"A hollowed-out one, with a little saw of blue steel in it?"

"Ah, of course you're familiar with the device." Valjean smiled.

"Twenty minutes on the cold floor in the Gorbeau garret. searching and searching with my arse in the air," replied Javert peevishly. " _Dame!_ yes, I'm familiar with the device. Or devices, as it were, since it seems you have a spare."

"You know, when you first told me this story, you had only looked for a quarter of an hour," teased Valjean.

"I lied to spare my own pride. Come to think of it, I'm still lying, for the same reason. It was actually a full half an hour. My eyes are good, but I am not a cat. Incidentally," he added with false sweetness, "familiar as I am with the device, I also know exactly where it is usually concealed from searching hands. Shall I turn away to preserve your modesty?"

Valjean felt himself flush again.

"It's in my pants somewhere," he mumbled, patting himself down. "I'm not at the galleys anymore; I don't get frisked. There's no reason to carry things up my behind."

"One would think so," said Javert with comical thoughtfulness. "Except one would on occasion be wrong."

Valjean had by then searched and turned out all his pockets onto the straw, twice. The saw-blade sou had vanished, along with the rest of his coins.

"This is very strange," wondered Valjean. "Where has it gone?"

"Nine to one, into Barre-Carosse's purse."

Valjean remembered Barre-Carosse stumbling in the dark and groping his jacket to retain balance. He cursed under his nose.

Javert snickered through his nostrils. "No honor between thieves, huh."

Annoyed, Valjean rose to his feet. "Stay where you are. This is a wine cellar - I'll break a bottle."

"Don't trouble yourself," said Javert, re-commencing his peculiar gymnastics. "I permit no cutting of any kind. I need these ropes to remain intact."

"You can't seriously be planning to just wriggle out of them?"

"I am indeed."

"Didn't you say Guelemer was most thorough in tying you up?"

"I _did_ say so. He _was_ quite thorough. But he is an ignorant man, my Guelemer. He had no idea whom he was tying up."

Javert wriggled up onto his knees, bending his head low to the ground. But for the ropes and the long blonde hair falling around his face, he looked like Louis the Pious doing public penance at Attigny.

"I'll need a few minutes…" he mumbled. "Ah! Had this been a strait-jacket, I would already be free. But this is no strait-jacket..."

"You can get out of a strait-jacket?" asked Valjean, curious.

Javert exhaled a half-strangled laugh.

"No trouble. Though there are variables. For instance, the size of the thing. Sometimes they give you one too small to do anything but sit there and feel your elbows swell. Also, it matters who's putting me into it. Brother Chesnel tied the sleeves very tight but often neglected the bottom straps. Other brothers were not attentive enough to make me exhale. There are many ways to do it wrong, and only one to do it right."

"Who is Brother Chesnel? and the 'others'?"

"The attendant brothers at Charenton."

"The royal house of Charenton?" Valjean's head swam. "The lunatic asylum?!"

"Don't shout. Yes, the royal house of something-for-everyone at Charenton. For a criminal, detention… for a lunatic, asylum… and for a man in despair betrayed by his employer, an infuriatingly good-natured chaplain and a strait-jacket."

At this, Javert pulled in his hands close to his chest, folded his right hand in half, pressing the thumb to the little finger, and slowly pulled it free from the restraints.

"And many hours of useful practice getting out of it," he finished with quiet sedate triumph.


	48. Chapter 48

Having freed one of his hands, Javert quickly loosened the binds around the other.

"No cutting," he reminded Valjean as they set to undoing the tight knots around his middle. "I need the entire length of the thing, intact."

"What do you intend to use it for?" asked Valjean, attempting at nonchalance.

"Not what you think," said Javert.

"What's that?"

"Look, if I wanted to hang myself, I would do it someplace without witnesses. Besides, there is nothing in this cellar to attach the rope to."

"There is the rail," Valjean pointed out.

"Don't be silly. That worm-eaten stick would never hold a hundred and sixty pounds of swinging weight," muttered Javert.

For a few seconds, he watched Valjean's fingers pulling at a knot near his waist. Then he put both his hands on Valjean's chest and pushed him away.

"What's the matter?" said Valjean. His chest seemed to burn where Javert touched it. "It was getting looser. Let me!.."

"I got it," muttered Javert with apparent anger and began picking at the knot himself. "Why don't you go up the stairs and put an ear to the door? They've gone awfully quiet up there."

It had indeed become very quiet. Valjean came up and lay down on the top stair to listen through the crack under the door. At first he heard nothing. Then he heard something comical.

"Someone's still up there, but they are sound asleep," he said. "I hear snores."

"What sort of snores?" asked Javert. "Big cavernous snores or high-pitched whistling ones?"

Valjean listened some more.

"Low and rumbling. It must be Guelemer."

"On the contrary, it must be anyone but Guelemer. For all his bulk, the man snores like a pipsqueak."

Something ugly snarled inside Valjean. "I don't suppose I ought to ask how you came to find this out." 

"Is that all you hear?" asked Javert, ignoring Valjean's dark look. "No pots clanging, no cutlery scraping, no wine glasses clinking? No conversation?"

"Just the snoring. The others might be in the garden."

"That's good if it's true," said Javert, pushing the still-knotted rope coils down around his hips and stepping out of them.

Valjean went back down the stairs and set to helping Javert again.

"So how did you say you found out about Guelemer's snoring?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

"I didn't say. But I see you already made another educated guess."

"After the way you had me going about that Marie fellow in the carriage, I'm reluctant to guess at anything anymore."

"Wise of you."

For a few minutes, they worked in silence. Finally, Javert remarked:

"You know, I can see you sneaking all those half-incredulous half-revolted looks at me. Why don't you just speak your mind and set it at ease?"

"It's none of my business."

"Fine, I'll have pity on you this time. No."

"'No' to what?"

"No, I did not bed Guelemer. We brought in a concubine of his a few months ago for petty larceny. As luck would have it, they had just quarreled. Usually, it's hard to get these scoundrels' women to say anything about them. But this one... Let's just say I heard things only her confessor would have business hearing."

"Thank God for small mercies," said Valjean with some venom.

At that, Javert raised his face. His eyes glinted in the darkness.

"Have a care, Valjean," he said coldly. "A fellow less sweet and pleasant than I might just take offense."

"Well, I do apologize," said Valjean, the snarling thing in his breast not quite becalmed. "But how am I to know where you draw the line in your…  _amours_?"

"Curious. I would have supposed that to your mind, the greater immorality of taking a man to bed would swallow up the lesser immorality of consorting with a murderer," said Javert bitterly.

Valjean sighed. "Look here. Give me a bit of time to adjust. This is all a great shock to me. I've always been under the impression that you were a paragon of chastity."

"It was not a false impression. If we discount Toulon, I have been chaste the entire time we knew each other. Thirteen years."

"What of your… you know, your 'brother'?"

"When I say 'my brother,' I mean my brother and nothing else. We were fathered by the same man. There are papers verifying this. I have beheld these papers."

"Ah. Well, that is good. I never knew you had siblings."

"Until a couple of years ago, neither did I. We met by accident." Javert cursed. "The devil take Guelemer for tying these knots so tight!"

He threw down his side of the coils into Valjean's lap. "You've untangled one already; you deal with the rest. The rope plainly heeds you better. I'll go look for something we can use to stall our friends upstairs."

He looked around the cellar.

"A metal thing is needed," he said.

"What sort of 'metal thing'?"

"A long, skinny metal thing, with a bulging top end. To bolt the door vertically. It opens inwards."

Valjean looked around.

"I see no crowbar," he said. "And all the crates are nailed shut."

"Perhaps," said Javert, standing up. "But I feel lucky." He bent over the closest crate and attempted to remove its top. It did not yield.

"Shall I smash one open for you?" offered Valjean and tried lifting the one by his side. It was lighter than he expected, and its innards made no noise. Whatever it held, it was not full bottles of wine.

"Let us comport ourselves like men and not like orangutans," said Javert. "Smashing things is not always the way to solve one's problems."

The third crate gave way. Javert turned it over on its side. A cornucopia of  rubbish spilled forth: old shoes, decaying clothes, rotting lengths of ribbon. Javert rummaged in the musty pile.

"Eureka," he said and pulled out a colossal skeleton key. Though it looked fit to open the gate to a fairy-tale giant's fortress, the likelihood was far greater that it had been nicked from the door of some prison.

"This will do nicely," said Javert.

They ascended the stairs together.

"How come this door can be barred from the inside?" wondered Valjean. "This seems odd and unnecessary for a wine cellar."

Javert squatted for a closer look.

"The latch is newly installed," he said in a low voice. "See the fresh masonry around it? This place changed hands a few weeks ago. Perhaps the new owner had other plans for this cellar than simply warehousing wine. And those plans required privacy and solitude."

Javert slid the key down into the holes of the latch and smiled like a dog: all teeth.

"Perfect. Why, it's almost as though it were meant for the job."


	49. Chapter 49

Having enhanced the security of their seclusion, Javert made his way back down the stairs to the excavated hole in the wall, assuming before it a pose of theatric pensiveness: one fist against his mouth and the other against his waist.

"Hmm!" he said. "Hm hm hm. Well, that is fine."

He crouched down to pick up the dislodged stone and began working it cautiously back into place.

"Don't you want to see what is in there?" asked Valjean.

"In good time," replied Javert, maneuvering his fingertips around the edges of the stone so that they wouldn't get pinched. "It's best not to disturb the evidence without inquest witnesses."

"Then you already know what this is about?"

Javert leaned his right fist against the stone floor and pitched slightly forward on it like an overgrown ape. "I can make, as you say, an educated guess," he said, squinting at the once more solid-looking wall. "This is a rotten sort of cellar. When we are done, I may need not only witnesses but also representatives of the Crown prosecutor."

Javert turned to Valjean.

"It's a pity that we can't have you write a sworn statement. At least under your true name. If you cannot take a legally recognized oath, you cannot figure as a witness in the case. Although…"

Javert got up and gestured in the air with his forefinger as thought out loud.

"…Although this could come in handy in expediting your pardon. Yes, that wouldn't be bad. We'll write your appeal soon. I shall have Bernard take your case – he is a very good lawyer, and he will be glad to be of service. He'll initiate your petition."

Javert wandered over to Valjean's side and took a seat close by him.

"We will make good use of your history as Mayor," he said, picking up a rope end to fiddle with. "And that bit of showmanship with the sailor on 'Orion' ought to do you a good turn as well. By the time Bernard is through, he'll not just have your conviction fully dismounted –  _Dame!_  he'll have you wearing a Cross. Then, once your citizenship is restored, we shall have you add a note or two to my deposition. What say you? isn't this a good plan?"

Valjean felt tears well up in his eyes.

"I cannot do this." he whispered.

"You don't want a pardon?"

"I do not want to send men to the guillotine."

"What men?"

"Any men! I cannot have my words, my testimony assist in sentencing someone to death."

"Even a proved assassin?"

"Even an assassin."

"Then you are refusing to become a police agent _?_

"I do not want to refuse. But if it would require me to do this, then… then I cannot."

Javert sank his fingers into his hair, then remembered the wig and pulled them back out carefully so as not to jostle it.

"Well, that's unfortunate," he said.

"I'm sorry. How long will you give me?"

"To do what?"

"To wrap up my affairs."

Javert stared.

"Are you making plans to die?"

"Not to die – to go to prison."

"You are going to turn yourself in? Whatever for?"

Valjean frowned.

"Wasn't my freedom contingent on my enrollment in the Sûreté?"

"Your freedom is contingent only on you not being out of our sight again. Like I told you before, think of it as a resumption of your parole, with me and Eugene as your parole officers. He admires you, you know. Professionally, at least. You are one crafty old fox. But let's face the facts: you lack basic social instincts. You don't so much consciously break laws as ignore them. I was wrong about you before – you are not vicious. But you are tremendously dangerous. And I think you yourself would agree with that."

Valjean thought about it.

"I am not dangerous so long as I'm left alone," he finally said.

Javert half-sighed half-groaned.

"You live in a city of a million people, Valjean. You will never be left alone. You will always have to contend with others people's rights and liberties. And you simply are incapable of this. Remember when you used to break down doors back in Montreuil-sur-mer, just to leave money on people's tables? Don't imagine for a second I didn't know whose handiwork that was. There was but one person in the city – nay, in the province - in the country! – who could be at once so eager to help and so perverse in their methods. This is what I mean. You lack social instincts. It did not occur to you when you were twenty-five to simply ask the baker for some bread as a loan, and it did not occur to you when you were fifty-five to simply post money to the persons you considered in need of it. Or to use a courier. Or a curé. No, no – a door stood in the way of your good intentions, and so it had to come down. This is why you cannot be left to your own devices."

"So what will you have me do if not be an agent?"

Javert threw down the frayed rope-end. "Well, I'm not about to let you gallivant around on your own, that's for certain. I suppose I can do what I did with Patroclus - give your name to the Prefecture, then do the writing for both of us. I enjoy writing reports, believe it or not. There is an art to report-writing that I believe I've quite mastered over the years."

"Javert, can I throw out my third bowl now?"

"Sure. We have time."

"You are a good policeman. Observant, thorough in your inquiries. Why did you insist on arresting Fantine that day? Had you asked anyone, you would have learned that she was not to blame for the fight. The man started it. But you did not ask anyone; you simply arrested her. I know he was a citizen, and you could not do so without my command - but you didn't even approach me to ask for it. How come?"

Javert sighed. "Once again, you ask with what you think is the foreknowledge of the answer, solely to pass judgment. This is a very bad habit. It betrays a lazy mind. Isn't there anything else you might want to ask me? Something that you could not easily deduce by yourself?"

"I used to hold grudges against you," said Valjean. "I am finding now that this is the only one that remains. You were horrid to a miserable dying young mother who sold everything she had to support her child, including parts of her body - her hair, her front teeth - and finally her honor. How could you do it?"

"How could  _I_ do it?" Javert snorted. "You sound like a priest who, upon finding a sweet in the pants pocket of the boy he has just sodomized, reads him a sermon about spoiling his teeth. Did you forget that it was _your_ establishment that kicked her out on the street for having a bastard in the first place?"

"I never knew about her being turned out, believe me. Had I known…"

"Oh, come now. Think it through logically. Wasn't it _you_ who instituted a strict rule for your work-women that they ought to be chaste, or else?"

"Yes, but…"

"Wasn't it _you_ who gave orders to segregate your workers by sex, so as to remove even the possibility of their temptation?"

"Sure."

"And wasn't it _you_ who hired and promoted forewomen of nosy dispositions and instructed them to enforce strict sexual continence among your employees? Well? I hear no answer."

"I did, I suppose."

"So how come you are so utterly surprised that the alphabet blocks you yourself arranged with such care ended up spelling 'Out, whore'?"

"I accept full responsibility for her downfall. Though had she but explained… but never mind. I know I did wrong by her, even if unintentionally."

Javert sneered. "Yes, I'm sure. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Too bad one cannot turn the sin itself out on the street, alone, without its vessel. Then perhaps the vessel wouldn't have to break itself into pieces and sell those pieces to all and sundry. But what can you do? Morality..."

"I can do nothing." Valjean wiped at his eyes. "Nothing at all. Believe me, you can't possibly shame me any more than I've already shamed myself. I know I wronged her. But tell me, finally, I need to know: why did _you_? You speak in her defense now, and yet back then you hated her so..."

"Hated her! What an idea. I tried to think as little of her as possible. The silly woman drove me crazy."

"How so?"

Javert blinked at him. "You must be joking. You mean to say, you don't know?"

"I don't know – that's why I'm asking."

"You must have been the only one in town who did not know, then. The jade fancied herself in love with me."


	50. Chapter 50

The words came out of Valjean's mouth before he could stop them.

"That's a lie."

Javert's unblinking gray gaze turned opaque. There was nothing in it now - not even reproach.

"A mistake," corrected himself Valjean. "You are making a mistake."

"If it was a mistake, it's one that a great deal of people made. Quite often to my face and with laughter."

"But how is this possible?.. You and… her?"

Javert sighed.

"It's not a nice story. She didn't have the hardiness needed for that profession, your Fantine. She kept looking around for a protector, a savior. But she was not beautiful enough to temp any man of standing into making her his mistress. The soldiers were not tempted either, and also they were brutes. She must have picked me because there was simply no one else. I was harsh with her, but harsh like a functionary, without abuse or profanity. I also never approached her or any other woman of the town personally. So many in the police abuse their power and demand free services of the women they are supposed to monitor. The soldier guard certainly did this regularly. But I was never a client, hers or anyone's."

"She began to hover around the station, making excuses to address me. At first I thought she was summoning up the courage to ask me to remove her from the list of public women. When I looked through the list, I saw that she was not on it to begin with. Then I thought that she was trying to bring herself into accord with police regulations – have her name entered into the books, undergo examinations, pay her medical dues. I eventually detained her to converse on the subject. She blushed a whole lot but said little. It was a familiar story. She hated her profession but couldn't afford to stop. I told her that she had to enroll if she meant to continue, and even threatened to jail her for non-compliance. She relented and went to the doctor. Later I learned that she was too ashamed to tell him the real reason for her visit, and he took her pulse instead of looking where it actually mattered. When I found this out, I detained her again. She promised to have a proper medical check-up once she scraped together enough money for back fees. I decided to forget about her while I had other things to deal with - you were running me ragged with all sort of nonsense at the time, and I was actually glad of it. She got the hint and stayed good and quiet, to avoid engaging my attention. It bothered me to have her walk about unregistered, but I could justify looking the other way as long as I stayed busy with other matters."

"Then our truce came to an abrupt end. One evening, I caught her  _mec_  beating her outside a wineshop. They were both drunk out of their tiny minds. When I came over to break them up, I was mortified. The man looked far too much like me: dark and hairy and ugly, only a fair bit shorter. How she came upon a Gypsy, I don't even know – must've been an outcast, a _gadjo_ , like myself, since I've neither seen nor heard of any _vurdon_  in the area. Soon as he saw me, he was off like a shot. The girl watched him run down the street and tried to faint picturesquely into my arms. I propped her up against a wall and reminded her to go to the damn doctor, or I'll have her in jail for three months before she could say 'twenty for an upright.' She began to cackle. Then all her friends joined in - they had been watching the whole spectacle unfold from around the corner.  _Nom d'un chien!_ There are jokes that make cab-drivers blush; there are jokes that make the cab-drivers' horses blush; and then there are jokes that public women toss around among themselves. They saw no reason to hold back in my presence. They'd taken my measure long ago. A sod to them was as good as a sister – even a police sod, with a cane and a scowl. Since then, I had no peace from them – Fantine was my _belle dame_ , I was her  _preux chevalier._ From them, the officers caught the joke; then the idlers; then everyone else. Half the town - the female half - thought me a blackguard for making a whore my mistress; the other half, the male one, thought me a fool for picking such an ugly one. Meanwhile, you remained graciously tactful and reasonable, or so I had thought. Now I know you were simply uninformed. What would you have done, I wonder, had you heard? Would you have questioned me about it?"

"I doubt it," said Valjean. "I have a difficult time talking of such things with people. Was this why you screamed at her? For damaging your reputation?"

"My reputation! I didn't care a fig for my reputation. I screamed because… because she was simply there. It was you I was angry with - she just got caught in the cross-fire. It was not kind of me, I admit, but I'm not a kind man. If I'm gripped by wrath, I can't think straight. And there was another thing…"

Javert chewed his bottom lip.

"I wasn't receptive to her flirtations, but some part of me was gratified by them. You see, almost no one in that town could stand me. You were respectful, but I suspected you and couldn't trust you. The head of the dispensary was friendly enough, but we rarely saw each other. Beyond that, all doors closed to me after the rumors spread about me and Fantine. So it was nice to hear honest notes of admiration in someone's voice – even if said voice was feminine and hoarse with hooch. There was little I could do for her beyond letting her off the hook for her dues – she told me she sent every sou to "those peasants" for her sick daughter's upkeep, and I could see that she was not lying. She had nothing. Not even decent shoes to walk around in the snow in the winter. Not even a warm shawl. She might have got them, but she chose to drink brandy instead. That accounted for all the money she spent on herself. I told her to quit it many times, that it would be the death of her. She would promise to go off it, then she'd get drunk again. I'd have her spend the night in jail to sober up, then I'd release her back out on the streets."

"As long as she brawled with her own kind, I could avert my eyes. But then she attacked a citizen, an elector, someone of actual standing in the town. I became quite furious with her then. She had exhausted my patience. I decided that the time had come for her to be off the streets, for good. She was becoming a nuisance to public peace and a danger to herself. Then you intervened, and everything went sideways. The next time I saw her, she was in the hospital, and you were sitting by her side like a nurse. I confess, I felt somewhat betrayed. You were the one who did this to her, but she was ready to forgive you for a few kind words and some money. I had tried to help her out for two years, by all methods available to me, but what of it? Now it was "Monsieur le Maire" this and "Monsieur le Maire" that. I couldn't resist taking you down a peg in front of her. I saw that she was gasping for breath, but such is late stage phthisis. It wasn't going to stop me. I had to speak my mind about you, and she was my only audience. And in reply, you told me I killed her. You told me this, you! the sanctimonious prick who couldn't tolerate an unchaste girl making his bracelets! Oh, I was ready to strike you, then. I'd had such a fill of your hypocrisy and your falsehoods! But then I saw her lying there, her eyes open and blind, her chest still under the covers, and I realized that you were right: she had died."

"It was the first time I saw someone die in front of me since Isaac. That opaque stillness in her eyes, those last shudders... I almost fled the room, but I forced myself to halt after a few steps. I did not love her. I knew she was dying, and I did not think I would regret her when she was gone. But now that it happened, I was on the verge of tears. For her, for him, for myself… The room turned blindingly bright before my eyes, then utterly dark. I suspect that I had a fit. When I came back to my senses, you were standing in front of me and saying that you were at my disposal."


	51. Chapter 51

"I think I understand," murmured Valjean. "The same thing occurred with me and Little Gervais."

"Did it," said Javert flatly, peering at him unblinkingly.

Valjean realized that he uttered another stupidity. Still, he forged on.

"Not the being in love. I only mean that when I ran into him – when he ran into me, rather, - I was not myself. I had just been forgiven by the Bishop, forgiven without any reason. I was… angry. More than angry, I felt as if my whole world had been upended. There was nothing in me but this anger at him, and horror at myself, and utter confusion. I saw a coin roll towards me. The only part of me that was still alert was the thief. He was not one to be preoccupied with matters of the soul. He just stepped on the coin and thought, 'Mine now.' When the boy ran towards me and started begging me to give him back his money, I scarcely heard him. All I knew was that my soul was undergoing a transformation, a transmutation, even, that I was turning from a creature of darkness into something else altogether - something worthier. And there was this raggedy urchin, whining and begging, and pulling at my foot. Distracting me from my lofty task, in short. So I lashed out at him."

Valjean laughed without mirth. "Isn't that the most ironic thing?"

"The most something, to be sure," allowed Javert glacially.

 "Yet I had no intent to do him any harm. You must believe me in that, if nothing else!" pleaded Valjean. "If I can't have that, than I can truly have nothing. The thief in me might raise a club to a child to scare him off, but even he would never strike him. I have transgressed a lot in my life, but I have never raised a hand to a child. Not even a bare hand."

Javert leaned in to look him in the eye. "Is that right?" he asked low and mocking, his upper lip curving up towards his nose in disgust.

"Yes," said Valjean and met Javert's eyes. "You can believe what you like about me - it is most likely true - but you must not believe this. I would never do violence to a child.

The snarl fell away slowly from Javert's face. He turned away.

"Well, even so" he said, and added, as if to himself: "Besides, not all violence is violence."  

Valjean did not understand him, but he remained quiet. For a while they both kept pulling at the rope knots, to little effect. 

"I wish I could say that I am always perfect in my comportment," Javert finally said, in a tone that seemed almost artificially conversational. "But I am not, and you know I am not. And even though I do not lose my temper often, when I do lose it, I lose it quite entirely."

"Well, you are only human," said Valjean. "Fits of temper happen to everyone, even to irreproachable police agents."

Javert gave a mournful half-laugh.

"Not all police agents. Take Prefect Gisquet himself. One day, he shot several fingers off his hand in a hunting accident. Do you know what he said about it? 'Oh well, looks like I'll be saving half on all my gloves from now on.' Now that's self-possession! That is the kind of man I've always wanted to be - cool in any weather, level-headed in any storm. Rational, though the world turn to chaos around me. But instead, I run hot and cold."

Valjean shook his head slightly. "You are too hard on yourself. You always were. Harder than on anyone else. I still remember how distraught you were after denouncing me."

Javert moaned and winced. "To this day, I don't know how I let myself do it."

"I bet I know what you were thinking," said Valjean with a small smile. "You were thinking: 'Who does this suspicious fruit think he is, invading my sovereign territory with his unnatural acts of social rearrangement and misguided charity? Why, if everyone ran around doing as he does, rewarding vice with praise and gifts, who would ever want to obey the law?'"

Javert snorted. "Overshot."

"Really?"

"By a good _toise._ * If I had thought that you were doing what you were doing out of mere charity, I would have probably held back."

"Why did you denounce me, then?"

"Because I already thought of you as Jean Valjean then, not Mayor Madeleine. This made me rash. I thought your entire performance with Fantine was a pre-emptive strike."

"Against whom?"

"Against myself, naturally."

Valjean couldn't repress an incredulous laugh. "But that's preposterous!"

"It made sense at the time. Everything added up. You were Jean Valjean. You feared that I would identify you after seeing you perform your feat of strength with Father Fauchelevent's cart. Naturally, you needed to have me turned out, so that I could not identify you. This was a perfect moment. Had I obeyed you, it would be the end of my career in the police."

"What? Through the release of a public woman?"

"It would have been more than enough."

"But the detention of women like her is left entirely to the discretion of the police. How could it have mattered to anyone?"

"Think on what you wanted me to do," said Javert. "You wanted me to release a public girl, Fantine, and detain instead her victim, Sieur Bamatabois. A citizen, with all the rights of a citizen. Arrest him 'properly,' I recall you saying. Unthinkable!"

"Unthinkable? To release that poor innocent woman and arrest instead the real malefactor?"

Javert threw up his hands. "Where do I start! In the first place, was she innocent?"

"She was innocent of the offense you ascribed to her, yes."

"What I ascribed to her was flinging herself on Bamatabois, rending his clothes, scratching at his face, and hurling all manner of verbal abuse at him. Did that not happen?"

"She was only retaliating hurt for hurt. The villain put snow down her dress!"

"So I should have had him arrested for it? A bourgeois, arrested for putting snow down a prostitute's gown, and the prostitute, who injured him several ways in return, released? Well, that is something. How did you imagine that happening precisely? What was I to charge him with? For a first-time offender, a snowball does not stretch out into assault!"

"A snowball on bare skin in the middle of winter does!" argued Valjean.

Javert threw up his hands again. "Then I suppose I should have also arrested all the children of the town that same day? And most of the bored soldiers? Be reasonable, Valjean. A snowball is an unwise jest, perhaps even a cruel one, under the circumstances, but it is not a criminal offense! Moreover, you said yourself that detention of public women is a matter left to the discretion of the police. Detention of the bourgeois, however, is not. You certainly seemed to know the relevant articles of the Code well enough when you quoted them back to me."

"You could have had him arrested under my orders. Which I would have gladly given you, had you reported to me what had happened. But you didn't even bring it to my attention - you just let him go and pronounced judgement on her, all on your own!"

"Oh, that is rich. So you would have made me arrest him. Great! And how precisely did you imagine his arraignment? What would I have charged him with before the examining judge?"

Valjean refused to budge. "Forget the arraignment. A night in jail would've sufficed. You observed him in a fight, after all, so you had probable cause."

"No, Valjean, I had observed him being _beaten_. I had not observed _him_ raising a hand to her even once."

"Fine, then you could have detained him later, after conducting an inquiry and discovering the matter with the snowball."

"Again with that snowball! If you wanted police action on snowballs, then you should have issued an edict against snowball fights!"

"Javert, whether or not it a snowball is sufficient cause for action, that is something to be left up to the judge. Your job was to detain Bamatabois, let us say under suspicion of disturbing the peace. Had the judge declined to issue a warrant, you could've simply restored him to freedom."

"So, I was to give him a night or several nights in jail for his snowball, but let the girl go free, even though she scratched him, bruised him, caused material damages to his clothes, and verbally assaulted him in public view? Fine, let's have it so. Let's imagine that I released her, as you commanded, and brought that oaf Bamatabois to the jail instead.  _En bonne police,_ just as you wanted. Taken two soldiers of the guard, dragged him out of the inn where he habitually eats his dinner, escorted him out in handcuffs, installed him in the jail. Within an hour, the whole town would be talking of nothing else. 'How now, mother Bourgogne,'" said Javert in an old woman's croak made all the more comical by his solemn and earnest expression. "'Have you heard? Sieur Bamatabois is in jail!'

'Why, no, mother Cigogne!" he answered himself in a slightly different croak, "I have not! Whatever for?'

'Why, mother Bourgogne, it's a tale such as you wouldn't believe! I was heading to the haberdasher's and saw the whole thing! Sieur Bamatabois was taking a stroll down the boulevard, peaceful as you please. A fancy struck him and he threw a snowball at a drunk fallen woman that was patrolling the same street. An innocent jest! But the harpy, soused as she was, became so furious that she threw herself on the poor man and began pummeling him, scratching his face and rending his clothes! And such vile oaths poured from her mouth, mother Bourgogne, as I have not heard since that water-carrier on our street accidentally crushed his toe under the barrel. No one dared help poor Bamatabois for fear of her. "Won't someone call the police?" I cried, and just then, that police fellow Javert came out onto the square and took the whore away with him. Well, thought I, at least some things are still in order in this world! But oh, the outrage! not half an hour later, as I was walking back from the haberdasher's past the police station, what should I see but that nasty woman and the inspector making pleasant small-talk as they part at the door! The obscenity of it! Truly, that man is despicable. And then, would you believe it? the blackguard sent his men into "The Cat and the Yarn-ball" just as Sieur Bamatabois was dining and had him arrested! Such a spectacle! There was our poor Bamatabois, led out in handcuffs for all the town to see, a roast chicken leg still clutched in one of his hands! I ask you, mother Bourgogne, what is the world coming to? A man of property so disgraced for jesting with a drunk public woman! And the creature herself coddled by the corrupt town inspector and released back onto the streets after violating Sieur Bamatabois as she did!'

'Mercy, mercy, mother Cigogne, what a travesty!'

'A travesty indeed, mother Bourgogne! These are bad times indeed, when the police make the public women their pets and a bourgeois gets arrested at his dinner-table for throwing a snowball!'"

Javert raised his eyebrows at Valjean.

"How was that?" he asked in his usual voice. "Comprehensive? Or shall I continue? You say nothing; the main point of the matter must not have quite penetrated yet. I shall continue."

"The same day, Sieur Bamatabois's good friend district attorney Sieur de Monfras would have had his personal courier on the evening  _diligence_ from Calais, clutching a complaint against me to Sieur Delavau, Prefect of Police at Paris. You look surprised, Valjean. Yes, Sieur de Monfras, the district attorney of Pas-de-Calais and the very good friend of Bamatabois, or rather of Bamatabois  _père_. And oh, what joy would reign in the Paris Prefecture once the courier made his way to the Delavau's  _cabinet particulier!_ "

"I thought you were on great terms with the central authorities," said Valjean. "Didn't you owe your post to the protection of Chabouillet, the Secretary to the Prefect?"

"Secretary to Prefect de Anglés, you ninny, not Prefect Delavau! Comte de Anglés had been superseded all of a month after I transferred. Chabouillet became chief of the First bureau of the First division after that; I wasn't any of his business anymore. You know what his new position entailed? Overseeing recapture of deserters, surveying workers’ societies, and contraband of textiles."

"Were things that bad between you and the new Prefect?"

"Bad enough. Delavau had not been happy that Chabouillet had de Anglés release me out to pasture into the provinces. But he was even less happy that the previous administration had put such confidence in someone he considered utterly unsuited to police service. To think of it: an irreligious veteran from the Imperial Guard, and an _antiphysitique_ to boot _,_  to borrow a word from a colleague of mine. Don't buy into the gossip that the Jesuits are all sods and great friends of sods. I was the boogeyman's boogeyman to them. But there were still men of some standing in Paris who owed me their gratitude for services rendered, so Delavau could not turn me out on a whim. But with something this scandalous falling into his lap, he would have his justification at last. That missive would have been passed straight to Franchet-Desperey, Director of the Police at the Ministry of the Interior, and the retaliation against me would have been swift and jubilant."

"So this is how the whole adventure would have ended if you had had your way. I would have been cashiered. Our Bamatabois would have been freed with extensive apologies from the authorities, possibly bolstered by compensation from the town coffers for trouble and humiliation incurred – a compensation which, in my understanding, the town could ill afford, since they were going halfsies with you on a second infant school at the time. Had I run to you for orders, a civil suit may have been launched against your own person. And what of our dear damsel? Why, she would have been arraigned before a judge and thrown, without too much dithering, into Les Madelonettes for three to five. What for? Assault, battery, property damage she could afford no restitution for - unless you think she could afford to buy Bamatabois a new hat? I doubt it, personally. Why such a long sentence, you might ask? Well, you don't imagine this was my first time hauling her in, do you? She's seen the inside of our jail before, for brawls as well as other things. Her record was long enough to secure for her quite the nice little sojourn to "the country." And with her phthisis as bad as it was, she would have likely expired in the jail at the assizes at Arras, waiting for her sentence."

"So now imagine my state of mind as I stood there, watching her rage and spit at you and yourself insist that she go free. Every wheel in my brain was turning. Why would you would want me to release this woman? She was clearly in no condition to be out in the cold, being practically undressed. She was ill enough to constitute a public health hazard, given her profession. And to top it all off, she was abusing you in my presence. It made no sense! The only rational explanation I could think of was that you were setting me up for dismissal. Why? Because you were Jean Valjean, and you were afraid of me. Even the potential civil suit and loss of some money to Bamatabois would have been worth ensuring your freedom. And you were using a poor streetwalker as your pawn. She was half-crazy, ill, drunk, and in despair. She thought she needed to be free, so as to continue earning money to send for her daughter's keep. She did not seem to understand that were she to go out into the snow again, she would be dead in the gutter within a few days. And the way you were insisting on her freedom, neither did you. But you were not crazy or drunk or desperate. So why did you want her free, when any honest and clear-thinking person could see that restoring her freedom would have meant condemning her to sure death?"

Valjean shook his head. "I had nothing like that in mind. I did not want her back out on the streets; I wanted her to be in a hospital, in bed."

"Sure, sure. I know this now. But you did not say 'hospital' then. You said 'liberty.' In my humble understanding, securing her a hospital bed would have required for her to be in detention, with the state reimbursing the town hospital for her stay, since the town jail had no infirmary of its own. You made it an issue of charity and established her in your own private infirmary. Well! I am not a mind-reader, contrary to what some may believe. I had no idea you had such plans when you bade me let her go. I took you at your word, and that word was 'liberty.' You seemed intent on her getting right back on the streets."

"You did not say 'hospital' either: you said 'prison'! I wouldn't have been so brusque with you had you explained yourself!"

"Explained myself? To an ex-convict turned Mayor who felt himself on the verge of being discovered and was plainly scheming right before my eyes to have me dismissed from service? I was too busy thinking about your intentions to detail my own!"

"But how you could think that I wanted her to return to that disgusting life?"

"What indication was there that you did not?"

"Every indication! I said to her right there in the station that she would lead an honest life from that point on, that I would support both her and her child, that she would not need to work again!"

"I do not recall hearing anything of the sort."

Dumbstruck, Valjean dropped the coil of rope from which he was untangling the last knot. He remembered.

"That's right," he murmured. "That's right. You didn't hear any of this. I ordered you to leave the room."

 

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 _*toise_ \- exactly 6 _pieds_ (feet) (about 1.949 metres) in France until 1812, and 2 meters between 1812 and 1840.


	52. Chapter 52

The rope, now untangled, lay across Valjean's lap.

"We were both fools, it seems," he said with sad wistfulness.

"We were both rational men," contradicted Javert. "We just worked on incomplete knowledge of facts, and we did not trust each other. It's in this manner that some undercover police agents end up collaring each other instead of actual criminals. There is no ready remedy for it. This is how the police operates. One must habitually make inferences and act on them without having all the facts, hoping that if you are wrong, the judicial investigation will set things right again."

He stood up and began turning his head side to side, as though denying something with the utmost solemnity.

"Do you know what?" he said suddenly without pausing in his exercise. "I still have the pocket-book of that boy."

"Which boy?"

"Our wounded sewer child."

"Ah. Well, so return it to him."

Javert sucked his teeth. "I would rather you returned it for me. Pretend you had it the whole time and forgot. Remember, it was Inspector Javert who took it, for legitimate inspectorial reasons. Inspector Javert, if you recall, is now dead, and so can't return anything to anyone. You, on the other hand, could return it to him at any time. Or to his family, as it were."

"Oh, it would be to him. He is doing quite well for a dead man," said Valjean with a touch of mockery.

"Well, good. Any bits lost to gangrene?"

"Thankfully, no."

"Splendid. What are they using on his wounds?"

"Chloruretted lotions, I believe."

Javert frowned and paused with his hand on the back of his neck.

"Still? A month later?  _pardieu_! Are they intending to cure him or embalm him?"

"He is still feverish and delirious. The doctor fears infection."

"One doesn't sacrifice the integrity of surrounding tissues to fears of infection. If they persist in irritating the wounds with bleach, they'll just open up more surfaces for putrefaction! A whole month into treatment, it's silver nitrate they ought to be using. Who is his physician?"

"I don't know."

"Whoever he is, show him the door and invite Desplein."

" _Invite_ Desplein? It would be easier to invite the Pope to give him extreme unction."

"Fine, then invite that acolyte of his, Bianchon.  _Entice_ Desplein. You are a wealthy man. Promise him an endowment for five more cots at Hotel-Dieu. Grovel before him. Desplein responds well to charitable investments, especially when they are combined with sincere groveling. You will probably not get him to attend to your boy regularly, but even one consultation will be invaluable."

"You speak as though you were personally acquainted with him."

"I am, in a way. Isaac was one of Desplein's most promising pupils."

Javert crouched and began tying a sliding knot in the rope.

"I suppose if you and the boy's grandfather don't manage to entrap him with money, I might attempt an appeal to his sentimentality," he continued. "Desplein is a fantastic grouch, but he'd always had a special affection for Isaac. I might be able to capitalize on it, if he still remembers me. He hasn't spoken to me in over a decade. I'd have to re-introduce myself. Or introduce myself, as it were, since I don't believe he knows my name."

"He's forgotten your name, you mean?"

"No, I don't think he ever learned it."

"But you said you two had spoken before. What did he call you in conversation?"

Javert laughed a little. "Conversation! There was never any conversation. I said he spoke _to_ me, not _with_ me. I would show myself silently at the threshold of some recovery room. He would lift his head from the patient and say, 'Ah, it's thou. Is it seven o'clock already?' And then he'd stick his head out the door and roar out for the entire hospital to hear: 'Monsieur Edelstein, your husband has come to fetch you home!'"

Valjean winced.

"Oh, it was all in good jest. And then Isaac would call out from some other room, 'One minute!' or 'Five minutes!' Eventually, he would walk out to find me propping up the wall and swatting flies. He'd check in on his teacher to say goodbye, and we'd go off to sign him out for the day, with one of Desplein's sarcastic little blessings at our backs. His favorite one was, 'Don't forget to get some sleep as well, my boy, you have early hours tomorrow!' Here we are – pretty, isn't it?"

And Javert demonstrated a perfectly tied sliding knot.

"Let the  _vacqueros_  bother with bulls: tonight, you and I shall lasso ourselves an elephant!"

"This is for Guelemer, then?" asked Valjean.

"When we're all good and ready, yes." Javert scratched his head. "But this will eat at me now – since you are here as well, if we both die, who will return your son-in-law his pocketbook? You really ought to have stayed behind. It would've been much more convenient."

"Come, you didn't ask me to stay behind so that I might return his pocket-book for you. You didn't even tell me where it was."

"Vidocq could've told you that tomorrow, if you'd have waited for him. I left instructions with him."

"Instructions? To restore property to a dead man?"

"What mean you, 'a dead man'? you said he was alive."

"But you didn't know that until now. Wasn't that the first thing you said when you saw us by the sewer exit: 'He's a dead man'? What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I am beginning to realize that I will never make a police agent out of you," said Javert. "You overlook everything but the obvious."

"What did I overlook now?

"The coachman."

"What?"

"You overlooked the coachman. And the porter."

Now it was Valjean's turn to throw up his hands in frustration. "More riddles!"

"Everything is a riddle to you. Think about it: you were asking me, an inspector of the police, to transport home a rebel from the barricades. A man whom I saw raising weapons against the National Guard. Did it not strike you as even the least bit odd that I complied so readily?"

"I thought you wanted to do me a good turn for saving you."

"I wanted to give your neck a good turn for saving me! I helped you rescue the boy because I detest martial law. I believe in due process. What the rebels did was vile, but what the soldiers did to them in return was no less so. Here is the core of the matter: if I hadn't done what I did, the boy would have died. And the matter of his life or death was not in my scope of decision-making. A living man can yet be brought to justice and made dead by it, but a dead man cannot be revived to be exonerated. Thus, logic dictates to always err on the side of saving a life. But as an agent of the authorities, I was directly prohibited from aiding him. My standing orders that night were to pursue and arrest escaping rebels, not escort them home to be nursed by their loved ones. But arresting him would have meant his death. So I took the only real option open to me. Haven’t you guessed it by now?"

Valjean shook his head.

"Think harder! Recall how the thing happened. Picture it in your head. I come down to the bank to see you with the boy. You tell me he is wounded.  _Pardieu!_ As though I were blind and couldn't see blood drip out of him with every heartbeat. Still, the boy looks convincingly corpse-like to a layman: pale, bloody, immobile, eyes shut. I feel his radial pulse. It's there, but it's  _thready_  – rapid, very fine, hard to find, easy to lose. I am confident now that I can play this straight. I declare that the boy is dead. You deny it, but it is immaterial – you are not likely to offer yourself up as a witness against me, nor would they allow you to be one even if you did. But even if they did allow it, you would only tell them that I felt for his wrist pulse and found nothing. Which makes sense. It takes a practiced hand to find a severely wounded man's radial pulse. If I failed to find it, it was likely an honest mistake, not subterfuge. Had I felt his neck, like a sensible person, and instantly declared him dead, then the court would know I did not act  _bona fide._ But I unwisely reached for his wrist."

"I call the coachman. We load the boy in and ride to Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. I knock and summon the porter. He sees before him a policeman, a coachman, a corpse and a shit demon. His evening instantly becomes quite memorable. I inform him that I come bearing a gift for the proprietor of the house: his dead son. Of course, I know from the boy's pocket-book that it's not his son but his grandson. But I want the porter to be confused. He asks me what I'm going on about. I repeat myself, using different words: I brought him a man who had gone to the barricade and got himself killed there. And then, to cement it in his mind, I say the same thing a third time, again in different words: there will be a funeral here tomorrow."

"I sound very certain of this," Javert went on, "because I need to impress the fact of my certainty on both the porter and the coachman. If this comes to light, both of them are liable to be questioned. And they must be able to declare, in immediate and honest unison, that that clod of an inspector was absolutely certain that he was bringing back to Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire a _body_. A body, Valjean. Not a live rebel subject to arrest, but a body, an object without legal standing against which no criminal proceedings could be undertaken! Now do you understand?"


	53. Chapter 53

"I understand perfectly," said Valjean. He was becoming gloomy. "I understand that I am an idiot."

"Not true."

"Perfectly true. You know, when I was released from prison, they sent me to Pontarlier. I should have obeyed and gone to Pontarlier. The good bishop Myriel advised me to seek work at the local cheese dairies as a  _grurin_. I should have heeded the advice and become a cheese-maker. Or better yet, a cowherd. And there, you are snickering again."

"Why stop at a cowherd?" said Javert, shoulders shaking minutely. "Why not become a cow? You would have made an excellent cow. It would be a peaceful life. Just picture yourself with a bell around your neck, on all fours, eating grass and raising your head every once in a while to moo at another cow's behind..."

They were both laughing now.

"Don't think you are stupid for not seeing through me," Javert said finally. "These little subterfuges are all-pervasive in government business. Government clerks conceal things, policemen conceal things, prosecutors, well, prosecutors are in a league of their own. It's all a matter of intent. A clerk out to make a fortune and ascend to a Ministry lies and cheats to make his way. A prosecutor out to convict a suspect lies and cheats to obtain a confession. I lie, too. Well, not lie, per se, so much as play pretend in the name of the law and justice. This is not a paradox, though in an ideal world, it would be."

"I suppose your superiors don't care."

"Not so long as I stay within what the Code allows. And I always do. Superiors come and go, but the Code remains."

"You are still the Emperor's man, then?"

"No. I just told you: I am a law-man."

"But the Code is Napoleon's."

"Valjean, the Code is the world's."

"I don't understand you."

"That's fine." Javert rose to his feet and commenced stretching his long arms above his head. "I often don't understand myself."

"So you are not a Bonapartist? Isn't that why you were in conflict with Delavau?"

"I was in conflict with Delavau because Delavau was a scoundrel," countered Javert. "The Code does not care who is in charge of the police: a Bonapartist, an Orleanist, a Legitimist, a red Republican, or a devil with a forked tail. These men, they come and go from the Prefecture, shoving each other in their rush to the warm seat. Did you know that Paris changed its Prefect of the Police eight times in the last two years? Eight times! Imagine if I tried to keep up with all their political likes and dislikes! I'd be twirling round and round without stop, like a weathercock in a storm. What was duty one day would be taboo the next."

"Here's an example." Javert began to pace back and forth, gesticulating with his hands like a country lawyer in front of a jury. "Say that one Prefect issues to me and to the rest of the police fellows - the inspectors, the Security Brigade, the Morals police, everyone - standing orders to disband all gatherings of sodomites at Quai de l'Ecole and Champs Elysees. Two months later, an administration change brings in a new Prefect, who wants us instead to wear friendly and sociable faces and to protect the promenaders against potential assault. Now, has some fundamental truth about the acceptability of men courting other men in public changed? No. Has the law with respect to such gatherings been altered? It has not. The only things that changed were the personal tastes and political opinions of the head of the police in the city. Whom do I obey?"

"Both, in turn."

"Ha!"

"Well, whom then? Surely you don't consult an attorney each time you receive an order."

"I am an old dog, Valjean. By now, I can smell a magisterial overreach from a mile away. It's like it was with Gisquet and the rebels. Gisquet is generally a decent fellow, but had I obeyed his orders the night of the uprising, you would've been without a son-in-law today. Not because he would have been tried, found guilty of treason, and executed, but because he would've croaked in the Conciergerie within a day. He wouldn't have even made it to Bicêtre."

A sudden thought stopped Valjean cold. "So what will you do now that you know he's alive?"

"Bah. He's not sufficiently alive to stand trial."

"Suppose he recovers."

Javert shrugged. "As a Polish colleague of mine likes to say, 'This is not my circus; these are not my monkeys.' I was tied inside the entire time, remember? I didn't see him do anything unlawful."

"Isn’t being there unlawful enough?"

"That's a matter for the lawyers. I only detain people whom I witness breaking the law. Or if I have witnesses attesting to them breaking the law. Or physical evidence attesting to same. We have physical evidence of the young man being shot, but none of him doing any shooting." Javert gave Valjean a significant look. "Unless, of course, a witness were to come forth and denounce him."

"I doubt such a witness will emerge," said Valjean, after a pause.

Javert smiled his dog smile at him, all gums and teeth. "Do you know what? I am of the same opinion."

"That is very clever. One can argue one's way out of any order this way."

"Excessive caution trumps excessive obedience. Most policemen never question what they are asked to do. I have but one litmus test: will the order I am given land me in conflict with the law? If so, I cannot in good conscience comply. I am not in service to the state to protect the loves and hatreds of its ever-changing functionaries. I am in service to protect the law. And one finds that to serve the law, one must often disobey one's superiors. I cannot fault myself for this. The Prefect can fault me, if he wants – turn me out, perhaps; demote me, maybe – if I were not already so near the bottom of the government heap. But I doubt he will bother. For the salary I draw, I make myself very useful."

Javert stopped and looked at the door.

"Like right now, for instance," he said. "Let us make ourselves useful."

"How?" asked Valjean "We are locked in."

Javert grinned again and whirled the noose by his side, like a Spanish _vacquero_.


	54. Chapter 54

"Hey there!" Valjean knocked harder.

There was a noise from without; then a slurred voice asked:

"Whossere?"

"It is I, Jean-the-Jack. I need a favor."

" _Kekse_?"

"I need you to come down here and tie me up."

"What?" said the voice after a pause, now sounding slightly more sober.

"I said, come down here and tie me up!"

"Why do you want that?"

"Because I'm frightened."

"What?"

"Frightened, I'm frightened!"

Addressing a drunk man through the keyhole of the massive oak door was proving more difficult than Valjean anticipated. Next to him, Javert bared his teeth in frustration as he pressed his ear to the door.

"So? what do I care for that?" said the voice finally.

"I'm a religious man, you know," said Valjean.

"You're a ninny."

"There's a nail sticking out of the wall."

"What nail?"

"A big nail. Rusty. With a sharp edge. I could get wrench it out if I chose."

"What for?"

"To open my veins with."

"Hey now! None of that!"

"Come tie me up! I am very tempted."

"No offing yourself before you tell us about your money, Mr. Threadbare-Millionaire!"

"I haven't got any money. It's all gone."

"I don't believe you."

"That's why I need you to come down here and tie me up," explained Valjean patiently. "I've no money anymore. You don't believe me. You will torture me for it. But I'd rather be tortured for a short while on earth than forever in hell."

"So don't go to hell."

"I don't want to! But I'm weak in spirit. The nail tempts me. I'm afraid of pain."

"You? afraid of pain? You burned a hole in your own arm with a red-hot poker!"

Javert seized Valjean by the left arm, pulled up the sleeve of his worker's blouse and, like Thomas probing the flesh of the risen Savior, put his fingers in the scarred-over wound.

"And you didn't think to mention this to me when I laid out the plan?!" he hissed. "When we get out of here, I'll put one on your other arm, for symmetry!"

"I know I burned my arm!" said Valjean hurriedly. "I was not in my right mind. It hurt badly afterwards. I was in a fever for weeks. It was miserable. I don't want to go through that again. I'm too old. And I have no daughter anymore to care for me in my convalescence. She has gotten married. Her husband is strict and won't let her see me. Come down here and tie me up. Why did you tie up the drunk but not me? That was unfair of you. He doesn't even need it, he's out cold. And me, I don't want to damn my soul to spare my body."

The men held their breath.

"All right," said the voice outside finally. "Wait. Keep away from the nail. I'll get the rope."


	55. Chapter 55

The lock jangled for a few seconds. Then the door flew open with a bang, and a very tall man with a huge unkempt beard stumbled through. From his spot in the depths of the cellar, Valjean watched him make his way down the slippery stairs, his right hand bracing himself against the wall and his left one holding a candle.

Behind him, the door closed noiselessly.

When Javert laid out the plan earlier, Valjean thought at first that it could never work. It was all too much like a bad comedy. But now, watching Guelemer descend, he had to admit that Javert had been right. When Guelemer threw open the door, he had concealed Javert from his sight. And when he began talking under his breath, cursing overly religious ninnies and these damn slippery steps, he also concealed Javert from his hearing.

Valjean held his breath. The light of the candle flickered ominously on the faces of both predator and prey. For every step Guelemer took down, Javert took one with him, a shadow made flesh.

A coil of rope hung off Guelemer's right elbow. A coil of rope was clenched in Javert's right hand.

Everything in Valjean tightened in anticipation. His heart pounded. "Here I am!" he said hoarsely to Guelemer when the latter finally stepped onto the cellar floor. "Here! Come."

Valjean raised his hands, holding them out in front as though offering them to be tied.

At that moment, Javert threw the rope around Guelemer's throat from behind.

Guelemer wheezed and grabbed at it with both hands. The candle fell to the ground and sputtered out.

Valjean had been in many fights in his life. Most of the fleeting friendships he made growing up in his village grew out of brawls during fairs or holidays, when young men wandered around soused to the gills and ready to accuse even their own reflection in a puddle of looking at them funny. Later, in Toulon, it became almost a matter of course for some new inmate to try and measure his strength against that of the infamous Jean-the-Jack. Valjean became well-versed in the art of subduing an opponent without causing him too much irreparable harm.

Once he had Guelemer on the floor and underneath him in a lock, Valjean had little to do but wait. Half a minute of wheezing and croaking, and Guelemer's body went slack; then his eyes rolled into his head, and he was, as they say, 'spitch-cocked.'

"Good show," rasped Javert behind him. He sat against the wall holding his stomach with one hand and pulling the rope taunt with the other. Guelemer had elbowed him in the gut. "Very nice. It's always… always difficult to go against the big guys. You don't want to do damage, but you don't want to die, either. A problem. But you! you're one tough old bird..."

Rolling forward to his feet with a grunt, Javert checked the tightness of the noose around Guelemer's throat by sticking a finger behind it, then struck fire for the candle. Shortly after, Guelemer lay flat on his belly, with all his limbs tied together intricately behind him and the knotted rope still tight around his throat.

Javert pulled off Guelemer's shoes, shook them out, and flung them into the opposite cellar corner. Then he went through all the pockets in his cotton velvet waistcoat and duck trousers. One of them yielded a blackjack covered with soft leather, which Javert took.

Picking up his wig, which he had flung to the floor prior to the grapple, Javert unknotted and pulled from around his neck his kerchief, wrapping it a few times around the crumpled wig. Then he squatted on the floor by Guelemer's head.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," replied Valjean.

"On the count of three. One… two… three."

Valjean loosened the knot around Guelemer's neck. At the same time, Javert opened the man's mouth, stuffed the gag into it, then tied the ends of the kerchief around Guelemer's face. Several seconds later, Guelemer's eyes opened a slit - then wider, then wider still when they saw Javert smiling down at him.

"Hello, old pal," said Javert, watching the veins pop on Guelemer's forehead and the tendons strain on his thick meaty neck as he struggled furiously against his bonds and gag. "Nice to see you in good health and still bucking like a mustang. Still as stupid as ever, though." Javert showed Guelemer the blackjack. "If you're going in somewhere armed, best to hold the weapon ready right away. Otherwise, at best it's useless to you and at worst, it's the other fellow's weapon. Say, does Montparnasse know you've nicked his favorite blackjack? Nod yes or no."

Behind the gag, Guelemer was growling audibly. His face was filling up with blood. Valjean half feared the man would have an apoplectic attack right there on the spot.

"What, you don't want to answer?" continued Javert. "Fine, remain uncooperative. That's how I'll set it down later in my report: 'Tah tuh tuh tuh, and Sieur Guelemer remained throughout un – co – operative.'" Javert mimed writing for a while, then paused with his fingers still holding an invisible pen. "Sure you don't want to chat?" he asked.

Guelemer jerked so violently against his bonds that he inadvertently hit his head on one of the crates.

"Well, then I guess we're done. What do you think, Jack? Is he going to stay put?"

"As long as I've spent working on ships, he better be," said Valjean, casting a satisfied eye at his own rope work.

"Fantastic." Javert got up and, to Valjean's surprise, moved another crate over to tower over Guelemer's head, then a third one next to it. Now the man was walled-in from three sides, his body sticking out from between the three crates like the stem of a gigantic clover.

"What's that for?" asked Valjean.

Javert shrugged. "A little extra touch of disorientation. Also, it looks pretty."

Valjean walked up the stairs and put an ear to the door.

"I don't think anyone heard us," he said. "It's all quiet on that side."

"Or perhaps they heard us quite well and are sitting there with their guns pointed at the door, waiting to see who comes out, if anyone," countered Javert. "Although the walls of this place are a marvelous thing. The stone doesn't even reflect back echoes. A perfect dungeon."

"I'm going out," said Valjean. "I don't think there's anyone there." He cracked open the door.

"Come back, you fool!" hissed Javert. "Come back this instant!"

But Valjean was already looking around the tavern through the crack.

The tavern was empty, save for Barre-Carosse. He was sitting at the table and staring into a soup plate. Three empty bottles stood before him; two more could be seen under the table.

Valjean stepped out of the cellar. The door behind him shut quietly.

"G'emer?.." mumbled Barre-Carosse, raising his bloodshot eyes to Valjean.

A movement outside the window caught Valjean's eye. He thought of descending again, but it was too late. The door opened, and a small, diaphanous man walked in holding a gun. A newspaper was rolled up under his right arm.

"Oh! we have a guest," he said, sounding mildly pleased.

He was followed by a slightly taller figure, its face and hands swathed in bandages, and a handsome, fashionably dressed youth with black curls. Both of them looked familiar to Valjean, but he could not shake a feeling that this was the first time he was seeing them together.


	56. Chapter 56

"Take a seat wherever, good sir," said the small man. "Quickly, now."

The bandaged figure and the young man with pomaded curls came to stand on either side of the small man. Together, they looked picturesque enough to suggest a wastrel's progress, from moneyed youth to shriveled middle age to an unhallowed afterlife spent, for some peculiar reason, as an Egyptian mummy.

Valjean sat down behind the table closest to the cellar door, casually setting a foot against one of its legs and putting a fist on the table.

"Well, isn't this the darnest thing," said the smaller man after a pause. "I scarcely believe my eyes. Why, it is our rich bourgeois grandpa from the Gorbeau place! No mistaking you, sir. White as a chicken on top."

"My name is Jean-the-Jack," said Valjean. "And as I've said before to your friend Fabantou or Jondrette or whoever he was, I am neither rich, nor bourgeois. Nor am I a grandfather, come to that. So you are mistaken on all three counts."

The man sighed. "One hears this a lot these days. The rich part, I mean. One would think there is no industry or agriculture left in poor old France. No one has any coin to spare!"

"Oh, I have a coin all right," said Valjean, baring his teeth slightly. "If I may be permitted to reach into my pocket?"

The small man gestured indulgently with his pistol. Valjean made a show of going through his trouser pockets and frowned.

"Now that's odd," he said. "I'm clean." He looked pointedly at Barre-Carosse. "Your sticky-fingered pal here must've patted me down. Tell him to restore my property."

The man laughed a little. "Come, Barre-Carosse,  _aboule la carle_."*

Barre-Carosse kept his peace. In truth, he was far too far into his cups to follow directions – his murky gaze did not even flicker to the small man at the sound of his name.

The figure in bandages came up and stuck its hand unceremoniously into the drunk's pocket, pulling out a handful of change.

"'Ere's G'emer?" asked Barre-Carosse of the man ransacking his trousers.

"Down in the  _profonde_ ," answered Valjean.

Barre-Carosse got up and staggered to the cellar door. "Why?" he asked with sincere curiosity.

"How should I know?" said Valjean. "Go ask him yourself."

With some effort, Barre-Carosse pull open the massive door and disappeared inside. Valjean pushed the door closed again with his foot.

"Smells foul down there," he complained.

"Well?" asked the small man of the bandaged figure.

The man looked through the coins in his hand, jingled them, and shrugged. "What can be had from what is here?" he muttered. "A mutton leg and a mug of beer."

"There should be a sou coin in there," prompted Valjean.

"You wish to gift me with a sou coin?" asked the small man with an affable smile.

"Gift you?" Valjean snorted. "By no means. I expect to have it back when you're done looking."

The handsome young man raised an elegant eyebrow. The figure in bandages laughed out loud - a strangely carefree laugh, as though he were a student savoring a friend's fresh quip in a café. Picking the large sou coin out of the handful, he tossed it to the small man and said:

"Here, Babet: go forth and deny yourself nothing."

Babet caught the coin, looked it over, and shrugged as well. "It's a sou," he said. "An old one."

"Look closer," said Valjean. "Turn it in two directions, like a pomade box. It unscrews."

Babet turned the sou in his fingers, then again. 

So you are Babet, thought Valjean. You were the other one in the Gorbeau house. The pretty boy I've also met, near Austerlitz. And the other fellow, was he also at the Gorbeau place? who was he? Not the old man, not the long-haired man… What was his name? Javert named you all... It's on the tip of my tongue! How annoying.

With Babet's fourth or fifth effort, the coin finally came apart, and something small and thin glinted in the gloom as it fell to the floor. Babet bent down to pick up the tidbit.

"It's a sawblade," said Valjean. "Careful you don't lose or break it. I might need it again someday."

"Why, so it is! What a marvelous little construction," said Babet admiringly. "Your own invention? Benvenuto Cellini would be proud. So that's how you got out of your binds in the Gorbeau place! How clever of you. I take it the _grand-père_ is an old hand at the _grand pré**_?"

"My first arrest was under the Directory."

"Escaped or released?"

"First one, then the other. Then the former again."

"What did they get you for?"

"I stole a loaf of bread."

The curly youth burst out laughing.

"To feed a gaggle of crying ragamuffins, no doubt?" said Babet sardonically.

"Believe it or not, you're right."

"And how much did the loaf cost you?" asked the man with the bandages. His voice was peculiar, as though he were speaking through layers and layers of wool.

"Five years. Nineteen with interest."

Babet shook his head and dropped the sou into his pocket. "How dear bread is! Kings and governments come and go, but bread remains dear. No, there is no justice for the little man in this world. Metaphorically speaking," he added, sizing up Valjean, who was easily twice as broad as he.

"Where has Barre-Carosse disappeared off to?" asked the young man. The bandaged man shrugged.

"Check," he suggested laconically.

The young man opened the cellar door and called out: "Ey, Barre-Carosse, what's the hold up?"

Suddenly, he began backing up. A grimace of horror twisted his handsome face.

"A traffic jam on the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue de Bacq," came a deep voice from the cellar, accompanied by soft, sure footsteps. "All vehicles must now detour through Rue de Villeran. Barre-Carosse*** was required in his professional capacity."

Javert appeared in the doorway. He was wiping red off his hands with straw. There were blood splatters on the cuffs of his shirtsleeves.

* * *

 

*Abouler la carle – cough up the dough

**grand pré – galleys

*** Barre-Carosse – lit. 'stop-carriage', a barricade put in the middle of the street to signal a detour.


	57. Chapter 57

Smiling at everyone present, Javert closed the door and suddenly walloped the latch on it with his hand twice. The latch bent.

"Awfully drafty down there," he said, placing a flat stone on the table near Valjean's fist. "Catch your death if you're not careful."

For a few moments, everyone stood silent. Only the bandaged man kept tossing the coins in his hand into the air and catching them artfully. The coins jingled.

And just like that, Valjean remembered what he was called.

"Inspector Javert," finally said Babet through his teeth. "Proving once again the old maxim that turds do not sink."

The young man whipped out a knife and held it pointed at the table. The point quivered in the air. Pomade and nervous sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes; he wiped them furiously on his frock-coat shoulder. "It was Landot!" he snarled. "Landot brought the  _raille_  here!"

"Never build your business relationships on fear, Montparnasse," said Javert. "No matter how scary you are, there is always someone your comrade will find scarier. And then your power over them is undermined."

The point of Montparnasse's knife swiveled towards Valjean. "And you! I remember you now, Mister Jean-the-Jack, Mister  _Grand Fanandel_! You are that old fart that lectured me out in the fields by Austerlitz!"

Javert looked at Valjean quizzically. "What's this now?"

"This young man tried to rob me when I was out for a stroll one day," said Valjean. "I asked him if there was any trade he would like to pursue. He said that he would prefer to be a thief. I tried to dissuade him. Clearly, I failed."

"Why not tell the truth, old man? You gave me a long boring sermon about why thieving was naughty, and then you _stole my purse!_ "

Javert burst out laughing. "You didn't!" There was reluctant admiration in his voice. "Did you?"

"Of course I didn't!" protested Valjean. "I was the one who  _gave_  him that purse to begin with. He must've lost it."

"Loo-oo-ost it," drawled Montparnasse. "Rii-ii-ight. Here's a purse, put it into your pocket, sonny! Now watch the magician walk away, and presto! Nothing! I broke my brains trying to figure out that trick."

"It's disquieting how tricky police spies are becoming these days," said Babet, banked fury in his eyes. "I think you better sit down beside your friend, Inspector Javert." He gestured with the pistol in his hand. "Claquesous, search them both."

The man in bandages tucked his own pistol behind the back of his belt and stepped up to the bench to pat down Javert.

"Your health, Claquesous," said Javert to him. "How's that abscess? Have you tried a peeled potato slice on it? Works a treat."

Claquesous said nothing and moved on to Valjean, in whose pockets he discovered the toy pistol.

"A little toy for the little boy," he mumbled and tossed the pistol to Montparnasse. Montparnasse caught it. "Oh, heavy artillery, that!" he said with a grin and aimed it at Javert's head.

"Come now, don't fire," Javert told him with a smile of his own. "Your shot will miss fire."

"Oh, go on!" said Babet, whose pistol was also aimed at Javert's head. "Think you can pull off that trick twice?"

"What are you talking about?" asked Montparnasse.

Babet shook his head, rapidly and minutely, as if shaking off all doubts. "Nothing. He couldn't get that lucky again."

"So tell the boy to shoot me," said Javert.

"Why ask him? He's not my master." Montparnasse cocked the pistol. "Good-bye, Inspector!"

He fired.

The pistol clicked. Nothing happened.

"Told you that thing was a piece of junk," said Javert, leaning a bit towards Valjean.

Babet swore.

"You should've listened to Bigrenaille back at the Gorbeau place," said Javert. "He knew the score. I am the emperor of fiends."

Montparnasse shrugged and tossed the pistol aside. "What the gun couldn't start, the blade will finish."

"We've done that before, too," remarked Valjean. "I don't recall you faring very well."

"What do you hope to accomplish, Inspector?" asked Babet. "You are alone here. I still have two bullets left, and Claquesous as well. Montparnasse has his  _dague_. You have your hearty friend, that is true. But it's three armed against two unarmed. Your odds are no good."

"Ah, but you are overlooking something," said Javert. "It's three against two, you are right. Only it's the other way around. Did you forget already? One of you is a police spy."

Babet's gun shifted to Montparnasse, then to Claquesous. Montparnasse's knife described an uncertain arc in the air. Claquesous pulled out a pistol as well, the same kind as Babet's.

Javert stretched out his legs. "While the three of you are figuring things out, may I ask you something, Babet?"

Babet said nothing but shifted his pistol back to Javert.

"This tavern - did you acquire it by  _airing_ any of your fresh  _shiners_?"*

"Are you playing charades now?" asked Babet.

"Oh, drop the act," said Javert. "I know it was you who did the widow Leon in."

At once, both Claquesous' pistol and Montparnasse's knife-blade pointed in Babet's direction.

"What is he talking about, Babet?" growled Montparnasse. "It wasn't you, was it? Swear that it wasn't you!"

"I swear on my children it wasn't me!"

"Answer me also this," asked Javert. "How much does a quarter of an ounce of gold cost? You know, to use for false teeth?" asked Javert.

"I'm afraid my days of dentistry are long past," said Babet. "I am no longer in practice."

"Come, Babet, don't play the fool. A quarter of an apothecary's ounce of gold. In the light of your haul, practically nothing. There were three hundred thousand already in your bag, but you couldn't hold back, could you? The old woman was lying on the floor, face down in a puddle of warm blood, and you decided to be diligent. So you turned her over onto her back and pulled out her gold teeth."

"Traitor!" "Fiend!" Two cries that would no longer be held in, the former from Montparnasse, the latter from Claquesous.

"This ought to close the matter," said Babet and cocked his gun. "The priming powder is good. I loaded it myself. Had I known, I would have had it blessed by a priest, but even so, it should not fail."

Javert glanced at Claquesous, then at Montparnasse, who was quivering with rage. Slowly, with a small groan of effort, he got up from the bench and walked up to Babet so that the barrel of the gun was flush against his chest.

Valjean felt his insides congeal. Blood pounded in his ears. He wanted desperately to leap up, to overturn the table, tackle Babet, seize the gun barrel - anything but sit there and be forced to watch. Yet he remained where he sat, stiff, frozen - powerless. There was no outrunning a point-blank shot. One could not tackle a bullet.

"Don't do it, Babet!" he uttered, his tongue moving thickly in his mouth.

"Do it, Babet," said Javert evenly.

"Monsieur, please!.." moaned Valjean, rising from the table. His heart felt as though it was about to tear in half. "Anything you want! Everything I have, it's all yours! Please..."

A deafening shot rang out.

Javert did not budge.

Babet lowered his shaking gun hand. Javert stood tall in the acrid cloud of smoke. His vest and shirtsleeves were smudged by the powder. But there was no blood, and no wound.

A scream to shame a banshee tore out of Babet's throat. Flinging the gun to the floor, the man ran out of the shack as fast as his legs would carry him.

At that moment, Montparnasse leapt upon Javert but found his arms fixed fast behind his back by Valjean.

"Looks like you're on your own, child," said Javert to the young man. "Now, you can either drop the knife and be a good boy, or we can do this the hard way."

Montparnasse jerked in response, but Valjean held him fast enough to bruise. All the while, his eyes remained locked with Javert's over the boy's shoulder. He was boiling over with triumph and fury, elation and reproach - he could make no sense of himself. His entire being was in turmoil. Had they been alone, he did not know whether he would have shaken Javert like a rag doll or crushed him in an embrace.

Javert held his burning gaze for a few seconds, as if extending a mute apology. Then he pulled out of his pocket the small flagon of thick glass.

"You know what this is?" he asked, showing the flagon to Montparnasse and sloshing the clear liquid inside. "This is vitriol."

Montparnasse was silent.

"Shall I drip a little onto your lovely face?" suggested Javert sweetly.

The knife clattered to the floor.

"Good boy. Is this it?" asked Javert.

"That's it," echoed Claquesous, who had been so still and quiet that Valjean had lost sight of him.

"Then I think we're done here."

"I think we're done," echoed Claquesous.

"So go give the signal already." Javert's voice was different now, softer and fonder.

Picking up a ceramic plate from the table, Claquesous stepped over the threshold of the tavern. Cocking his pistol, he threw the plate into the air and fired at it.

The plate shattered midair.

* * *

 

* Airing = spending; shiners = gold pieces


	58. Chapter 58

A tremendous clatter arose. Within the blink of an eye, the tavern filled up with men carrying lanterns, sabers, and handcuffs. Montparnasse was seized by two soldiers, cuffed and forced down to sit against the wall. Another soldier placed Babet next to him, also in cuffs. Montparnasse's face was flushed; Babet, on the contrary, was so pale as to look almost green in the lantern light. His head drooped on his chest; he made the impression of a man about to lose consciousness.

"Two more downstairs, Louis," said Javert, addressing a tall young inspector who bore between the eyebrows of his handsome face a stamp of permanent discontent similar to Javert's own. "The latch might need to come off the door. I was a little violent with it."

"Wonder of wonders – you, violent!" said Vidocq's voice behind them. "Go sit down already."

Javert sat down on a bench behind the table, on the very spot where Valjean was rooted in horror just minutes prior. Stiff-legged and still reeling, Valjean sat down heavily beside him. Together, they watched Vidocq argue with the young inspector Louis about the best way to open the door.

"They should do it with an axe," muttered Valjean.

"And supposing they want the door to remain intact?" asked Javert in a low voice. He had not moved away to give Valjean any space, and they now sat flush against each other. The warmth of Javert's firm lean shoulder and side, coupled with the relief suffusing his body, was making Valjean's head swim.

"I meant, they can try to straighten the latch with the butt of the axe, from underneath."

Vidocq finally looked away from the curved latch. "What in heavens' name did you do to it?" he asked Javert.

Javert reached ahead and pushed the stone lightly across the table with his fingers. "Try this. What was good for bending might also be good for unbending."

"Where is your brother?" asked Valjean in a low voice. The bandaged man was not visible among the crowd.

"Probably outside smoking," replied Javert. "First smoke he could have in ages – the real Claquesous never touched tobacco. It's been almost a month since we made the switch."

Young inspector Louis made an impatient sign for Vidocq to step aside began hammering the latch with the stone from underneath. Vidocq came over to their bench, standing at Javert's other side to watch the process.

"Fetched your favorite from the Prefecture," he said with a smirk. "He was pacing the hallways like a dog on a short chain. I decided to invite him and his insomnia along."

The inspector stood up, unbuttoned his coat and placed it on the table, casting a disapproving glance at the three men watching him from the other side of it. Valjean thought he saw a bit of color bloom high on his cheeks. He fought to urge to scowl at him.

"Did you send for Allard?" ask Javert.

"Had to, didn't I?" Vidocq shrugged. "He's the big man now. He'll be here to pick everyone up soon."

"You and Canler rode here together? Don't tell me you're actually starting to get on?"

"Like oil and water," snorted Vidocq. "The silly pup can hardly contain his righteous sneer in my presence."

"He'll mature. Give him time."

By the by, the latch was unbent, and the gloomy young Canler motioned for three soldiers to accompany him down into the basement.

"I'm inclined to write him off as hopeless, at least in this aspect," said Vidocq. "For all their chumminess, he's fundamentally nothing like Allard."

Javert stretched voluptuously, wrinkling his nose and extending his legs under the table and his arms over his head. The tavern suddenly looked very small and cramped around his long-limbed form.

'How does a man like that live in France?' thought Valjean to himself, mentally measuring Javert's huge wingspan and stride. 'No seat would ever be comfortable, and all beds far too short…'

He recalled the oddly gigantic bed in Javert's apartment - clearly made to measure, wide as well as tremendously long. The thoughts of why it was so wide made his face heat with blood.

"Our commissaire Allard," Javert was telling Valjean meanwhile, "is like the fabled Japanese gigantic squid  _ika_ , of which it is said in the Book of the Waters: 'He contains ink and knows decorum.' Allard likewise contains vast quantities of ink and knows decorum. Canler, on the other hand, contains no ink. That is not so bad. But he also knows no decorum. That is worse."

"No, Canler contains only bile," said Vidocq. "'Once a thief, always a thief,' and so on. Canler the unbendable; Canler the implacable. Thence, Canler the deaf, and thence, Canler the perpetually under-informed. All law-breakers and otherwise immoral persons are sub-human to him and quite beneath his attention. He chases malefactors out of an ingrained spite, like a dog chasing rats."

"Which is not a bad instinct, in itself," remarked Javert.

"Perhaps. But he has yet to learn that this alone does not suffice to make a detective," continued Vidocq. "No witness or accused man will open up to him if he can't at least affect civility if not warmheartedness. And in our line of work, if you can't get people to talk to you, you're stuck with nothing but conjectures."

"Come, that is not true," countered Javert. "There remains physical evidence."

He must be peeved that his handsome bright-eyed pet is being slandered, thought Valjean bitterly.

"Physical evidence won't help you find a man who doesn't want to be found," said Vidocq. "It will only help tell you if he's the right man once you have him. A track in the mud, a clump of hair, a finger-smudge - these are no good on their own. True art of detection lies in surveillance, interrogation, and working with witnesses."

"He will be a nice fellow yet," promised Javert. "Or at least he'll learn to fake it, like I did." He gave Valjean a small playful shove with his shoulder, and Valjean felt a slight tremor go through him.

"You ought to take him along on sod patrols," smirked Vidocq. "Let him get a noseful of the odd perfume."

"Are you joking? He'll be wanting to arrest every _persilleuse_ * on sight.

"That's why you ought to take him with you more, as palliative."

"You've been taking him 'round ex-convict haunts – has he improved any around them?"

"No more than marginally. As soon as he sets foot in a  _tapis franc_ , he boils over with desire to arrest absolutely everyone in it right away, out of principle. Can't get anyone to talk to him. He emanates unwelcoming fluids."

They both laughed a little. Javert sighed.

"He worries me, that boy," he told Valjean, as if in confidence. "I see so much of myself in him. When he joined up, it was something of a revelation: is this what I looked like to the world at his age? And yet I know his heart is in the right place - or mostly in the right place. I try to prod him in the right direction. I guess there is something of an unfulfilled father in me."

"Ah, I know how you feel," said Valjean with a sad smile.

"Do you?" said Javert, suddenly serious.

"Of course," said Valjean. "Though it was different for me, I suppose. I never knew I wanted to be a father until I suddenly became one."

Javert gave him an unreadable look. His make-up had rubbed off in the course of the night, and his grey eyes once more shone like twin steel gimlets against his dusky complexion.

"I've been meaning to ask you…" he began to say but fell silent: the soldier guard came back up from the basement, leading Guelemer, who was proceeding slowly and in very small steps on account of his legs being tied together. After them emerged the unbendable and implacable Canler, the frown even more sharply etched in his forehead. He was dragging by the collar the gagged and blood-splattered body of Barre-Carosse, whose bruised eyes were rolled into his head.

"Don't bang him about too hard," said Javert. "This specimen has my snuffbox in one of his pockets."

He rose and paced along the wall, reviewing the four ruffians who were seated in a line against it.

"Well!" he said. "Back to La Force for the lot of you. And no posh rooms near the chimney this time, that's for sure."

He stopped in front of Montparnasse and pulled the little flagon out of his pocket.

"Fancy a drink?" he asked the boy.

Montparnasse regarded with fury. "You wouldn't dare to!" he snarled. "Not with everyone watching."

"Dare to do what? Dare to offer an arrested person some refreshment?" Javert shrugged. "Suit yourself. More for me. How about the rest of you? Also no? Fine."

He uncapped the flagon and, under everyone's eyes, tipped it into his own mouth. Montparnasse goggled.

"Drinking on the job, Javert?" sounded a voice in the doorway. It belonged to a gentleman of about forty, dressed in a long cape and flanked by two adjutants.

Javert choked and began to cough. The soldiers behind him laughed. The gentleman clapped him solicitously on his back.

"All right?" he asked, smiling. His voice was good-humored but resonant enough to carry over the din.

Javert wheezed something to him between coughs, to the further raucous laughter of the soldiers around him.

"My apologies for startling you. Is this all of them?"

Javert nodded.

"And what of the report? Shall we reconvene for it tomorrow?"

Javert grimaced and said something to him in a low voice.

"If you are in shape to do it, by all means, proceed. Though I would suggest a good night's sleep first."

Javert said something else and gestured with the hand holding the flagon towards the table where Valjean and Vidocq sat.

"Then I will await your report. Unless you want to make the delivery to the Prefecture yourself?"

Javert shook his head and asked something else.

"Naturally. All right, everyone, move out! Monsieur Vidocq." The man inclined his head in acknowledgement towards the table. Vidocq grunted something in response, but did not get up.

While the unbendable young Canler shepherded everyone out of the tavern, Javert made his way through the crowd to the table, where one of the caped gentleman's adjutants had deposited an ink well, some pens, a small box of blotting sand, and a stack of paper.

"What was that about?" Valjean asked

"Monsieur Allard has deigned to take over the operation, now that it has reached a safe conclusion," sighed Vidocq. "It should have been you, you know," he said to Javert.

"I am not up for playing Scheherezade with Gisquet right now," said Javert, sinking his fingers into the sandbox and taking a pinch from it. "Allard is doing me a favor by this."

"This could be your last opportunity to really shine before Gisquet. After Allard takes over officially, he won't be as inclined to give you ready audience."

"Oh, go on. Is this the first day we've known each other? I'm not in this business to shine before anyone. The less time I spend around magistrates, the better." Javert sniffed the air. "Do you think it would be considered low and unsporting of me to eat the fellows' dinner after having arrested them?"

Vidocq hmmed. "Well, seeing as the place is now under temporary police custody," – he nodded towards the group of inspectors standing in a circle outside by the tavern's doors – "one could consider it a form of justified appropriation for the purposes of continued inquiry."

Javert nodded. "Then I am definitely in the mood to appropriate some stew after I search the cellar."

"I'll come with you." Vidocq rose from the table. "Got any more vodka, to go with the stew?"

Javert set the empty flagon he was holding onto the table. "Sorry. All gone. Mostly up my nose. Bloody Allard."

* * *

 

*persilleuse - male prostitute


	59. Chapter 59

They lit several candles and disappeared into the cellar, accompanied by Allard's adjutants, who hovered several paces behind as though unwilling to disturb great men in conference. The last of them propped the cellar door open with a large stone.

Within seconds, Javert and Vidocq's voices were swallowed up entirely by the stone walls. Two inspectors remained outside, at both sides of the tavern door, as motionless as caryatids. None of them had spoken a word since they arrived.

'Is this because of a special sort of schooling?' wondered Valjean. To make himself useful, he had begun to wash and stack the plates and sets of silverware by the stew pot. 'Or are they mutes? No, no… what good is a squad of mute inspectors? They couldn't even call out to each other for assistance… No, I'm thinking nonsense.'

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and paused with the ladle above the stewpot. It was the bandaged man, slipping inside between the two immobile inspectors.

"Come have something to eat," Valjean invited, sincere in his welcome. "Your brother and Monsieur Vidocq are downstairs. They'll be back soon."

Valjean's invitation had a paradoxical effect: the man froze in place, as though hoping that this would make him invisible to Valjean.

"I'm a friend of your brother's," said Valjean, trying to think of what could be keeping the fearless double agent at such a distance from him. "My name is Valjean. We were all about to eat. There is stew and bread here. Will you have some?"

There was no answer. Although it was hard to tell with the bandages and the hat in the way, Valjean got the feeling that he was being examined.

Trying to move smoothly, with no sudden gestures, Valjean ladled out two plates and put two pieces of white bread over them. The man did not move to take one, so Valjean brought them both out to the table and sat down. When he looked up in the next second, he was astonished to see the man seated right across from him. Javert's talent for silent locomotion clearly ran in the family.

"So, you are Javert's brother." Valjean took his piece of bread. "I had no idea Javert had siblings."

The bandaged man remained as still as a tailor's dummy. He reeked of tobacco - the same cheap sort favored by Javert himself.

"Would you like to say grace?" Valjean offered uncertainly.

The man pitched forward slightly, as if to get a closer look into Valjean's eyes.

Exasperated by the strange pantomime, Valjean muttered a quick prayer under his nose and sank his teeth into the bread.

It was as though a lever had been pulled releasing some secret mechanism: the bandaged man sagged slightly in his chair, casually brought his right elbow up onto the table and grabbed his fork with a slight exhalation.

"So, you are Javert's friend," he said suddenly in a pleasant baritone, pulling down the bandages that covered his mouth. A broad swath of linen remained covering his nose, which made him look somewhat like a leper. "I had no idea Javert had friends."

"I suppose I'm not exactly a friend," said Valjean, pleased to finally make a connection. "More of a really old adversary."

"Ah. Then you are a man he once had arrested."

"You are right," said Valjean, a little embarrassed. "How did you know?"

"Javert has no other kind of friends," said the man in the bored tone of absolute assurance.

Given by the man's own brother as a thing entirely understood, this pronouncement struck Valjean as profoundly sad. And to that sadness, something else was also admixed, which Valjean was starting to recognize, to his own astonishment, as jealousy.

"Does he have many of those?" he asked.

"Of whom?"

"Men whom he arrests who become his friends thereafter."

"Some," said the man laconically.

"Has he no friends among the police?"

"He has no friends among anyone."

"How come?"

"It's simple," the man explained. "What do friends do together? They drink. When they drink, what do they talk about? Women. It would bore him."

Valjean chewed on that along with his stew.

"Vidocq is his friend," he said finally.

"Vidocq is his master," the man countered.

"Not any longer. Brigade de Sûreté is being fused into the detective corps of the police proper. Vidocq is out."

The man paused, then shrugged. "Well, so what. He'll just be Sasha's master from elsewhere."

"Sasha. This is Javert's given name?"

"Alexandre."

"Ah, he is called in the Russian fashion because he was in the Russian campaign," Valjean guessed.

They ate in silence that was neither friendly nor tense but somehow expectant. The men in the cellar were rendered silent by the stone walls; the men outside, by some convention Valjean had no knowledge of. All one could hear were spoons scraping against the plates.

Valjean finished his portion and rose to get seconds. Immediately, a second empty plate was presented to him. A little smile accompanied it; a glimmer in the eyes, still shadowed by the brim of the hat, accompanied the smile.

"Why don't you take off your hat?" offered Valjean, taking the man's plate to the stove. "You don't have to conceal your face from anyone here."

"To be honest, I quite forgot I had it on," said the man with a sad little laugh. "I've grown so used to it in the last month."

When Valjean came back to the table with two refilled plates, the hat and the bandages were gone. The man sat with his face in his right hand and looked towards the cellar door. Hearing Valjean come back, he turned around to face him.

 _Nomen_ was, on this occasion,  _omen_. Moineau had brown hair, brown eyes, an unremarkable nose and a regular mouth. No feature stood out to dominate the rest. The overall impression from him was quite agreeable but rather forgettable, like a pleasant taste that did not linger in the mouth.

He bore not the slightest resemblance to Javert. And yet his face seemed familiar to Valjean.

"How strange!" muttered the old man, baffled. "You resemble less Javert's brother than my own sister."


	60. Chapter 60

The young man smiled.

"I've heard this before. It appears that I'm a specimen of Everyman. Everyone recognizes someone else in me. It comes in rather handy in my profession."

He tucked heartily into his new portion of stew.

"I can't say I recognize Javert in you," said Valjean, picking up his fork as well.

"We have only our father in common. Javert tells me he did not resemble his father much, and I know I don't resemble mine. Things that are not equal to the same are not equal to each other."

There was a waft of muffled laughter from the cellar. Valjean saw that one of the inspectors had come up and was now holding it open. Seconds later, Javert emerged, holding something over his shoulder, like a wheat sheaf. He was followed by Vidocq, who had been the one laughing.

"Hullo, boy!" said Vidocq and gave Moineau a bear hug from behind, almost choking him with excess of goodwill. The young man growled theatrically into his food.

"Don't disturb him at feeding time. He might bite you," said Javert, setting his prize on the table. It was a leather bag, rather long and slender, its sides bearing several pale vertical traces. Its narrow opening had been crudely cropped and a length of draw-string had been sewn roughly around the edges to hold it shut.

"Behold! the fruit of today's exertions," said Javert.

"Come, put it down for now," suggested Vidocq. "Sit down and eat first."

Javert took the bag off the table, set it against a table leg, and sat down. "And what about you? Will you be joining us in the repast, Monsieur Vidocq, or does your refined palate shrink back from this rustic cookery?"

Moineau snorted into his stew, and even the two stone-faced inspectors cracked short-lived smiles.

"Don't tell me that rumormonger has gotten to you with that nonsense, too," grumbled Vidocq on his way to the kitchen. "When find the author of that _feuilleton_ , I will pull his ears off! You know I can eat even dog meat if I must."

He brought the pot to the table.

"Well, they do say that one's tastes change in old age," said Javert with utmost innocence, presenting Vidocq with an empty tin bowl.

Vidocq took it and swung half-heartedly at his head. "You better worry about your own tastes, you heathen," said Vidocq as he filled the bowl. "This is beef stew. Can you stomach eating your god?"

"What god?" asked Valjean, dumbstruck.

"It's not my god," said Javert, rolling his eyes. "But even if it were, - you manage to eat yours on the occasional Sunday, so why shouldn't I be able to?"

"He's a Hindoo, our Javert, you know," said Vidocq for Valjean's benefit. "They worship cows, those Hindoos."

Javert leaned on his elbow and threw Valjean a look that was both long-suffering and conspiratorial: look at what I must put up with!

"It was his Isaac that turned him, years ago," continued Vidocq blithely, filling up his plate. "He told him that clever men of science had figured out that Gypsies came from India, not Egypt. So now the simple creature fancies himself Hindoo instead of Egyptian. As if being a Hindoo and worshipping a cow is any better than being an Egyptian and worshipping a dog."

"Either one is better than being whatever you are and worshipping the golden calf," said Javert. "Don't listen to him, Valjean."

"Also, since he's found out his race hails from India, he started tagging along with me whenever I go to London," said Vidocq, setting the plates on the table.

"Why?" asked Valjean.

"To eat. There's good Indian food to be had in London."

"Good, perhaps not. But decent," said Javert. "Also, there's more of it every year. Fifteen years ago, there was barely anything beyond some basic curries. You want a good business venture idea, 'Gene? Here is one, gratis: open a restaurant in Paris that serves Indian dishes."

"And engage you as a cook? Agreed. Let's do it. At least I'd pay you better than the Prefecture."

"This reminds me," said Javert, becoming serious. "I'm going to be fifty francs short on my coach allowance this month."

"Already? Didn't you only just get it?"

"I did, but I had borrowed against it. I overspent last month."

"By fifty francs? What, did you finally decide to start eating a second meal regularly?"

"I had unforeseen traveling expenses."

"Fifty francs is two whole solid days' coach hire. Where did you go?"

"It was simply an unforeseen expense," repeated Javert.

"Oh ho! You are being secretive!"

Vidocq squinted, folded his hands before his head like an attentive priest and lowered his voice. "Confess, my child: did you take some fine young man out for a ride in a pretty coupe?"

Javert said nothing and continued to chew.

"You old dog!" exclaimed Vidocq, his eyes going wide. "Now there's a fine thing! Go on, tell! Was he very handsome?"

"I suppose so," said Javert pensively. "Yes, I rather think he was."

"Blond or brunet?"

"Black hair. Curls."

"Of course." Vidocq shook his head. "Well? where did the two of you go?"

"Nowhere special. A cafe overfull with people and noise. Then we parted for a while; then met up again and rode around a little. He was absolutely horizontal by that point, so I had him driven back to his place."

"And?"

"And nothing. I'm telling you, by the end of the day's excitement, he was quite out of it. I took him home, handed him over to his domestics, went on an errand, dropped by the station house on Place du Chatelet, and then went home."

"It's a strange story you're telling me," said Vidocq suspiciously. "When did all this happen?"

"So that's where you disappeared to, afterwards!" exclaimed Valjean. "I couldn't make sense of what happened. You were by the door, and then you weren't! I waited and waited. Why didn't you say anything?"

Javert gave him a severe look.

"Wait one minute," asked Vidocq. "You were there with him? On his rendez-vous?"

"It wasn't a rendez-vous," said Valjean, meeting the severity in Javert's eyes with serenity in his own. "He helped me get a wounded man to his house the night when the barricade fell. A young man, nearly dead. Very handsome, with black curls. He paid for the cab on which we took the boy home. That's the story he is telling you. The boy had been at the barricade with us. When it was taken, he was wounded, and I took him down into the sewer from Rue de Chanvrerie through an opening in the street. When I came back up with him, I ran into Javert, who had a cab engaged. I asked him to help me get the boy home. He agreed. The cab's cushions got spoilt with muck and blood. That's where those extra fifty francs went - to pay the coachman for his seats."

Vidocq shook his head. "You are hopeless," he told Javert. "And naturally, you won't be seeking reimbursement from the Prefecture?"

"The Prefecture is better off not knowing what I did with that money, don't you think?" said Javert reasonably. "Can't you just spot me? Put it on my tab if you must."

"Hold on," said Valjean. "Wait a minute. That was your own money?"

"Some of it was the Prefecture's money, some of it was my own. I had a coach stand by for six hours that night, on official business, and then you materialized with the boy, covered in all kinds of effluvia. So that night ate up a week's fiacre money instead of one day's."

"I wish you'd have told me – I'd have returned you the money instantly. Why didn't you say anything when we were at my house? I would have brought you down the money."

"I had other things on my mind. Remember, Inspector Javert was supposed to jump off a bridge that night. Monsieur Vidocq and I had already made up all the paperwork testifying to that. I still had to leave my resignation note at one of the stations, and make it long and rambling enough to mystify my superiors and encourage thoughts of derangement. My seclusion was scheduled to start within hours. But I hadn't planned... well. I had bought no groceries, no water... So do pardon me for leaving you as I did, but I was considerably preoccupied."

Vidocq leaned back in his chair, crossed his palms behind his head and said quietly but firmly:

"By the way, don't think you've gotten away with your little scheme. You and I will be having a chat about that yet." He threw a side glance at Moineau, who was still eating and appeared absorbed in the activity.

Javert stabbed a beef cube with his fork sullenly. "Can't wait."

"I haven't got anything right now," said Valjean, searching his pockets. "I should have paid the coachman myself, of course, but I only had a few coins on me that day, and I gave them all to this one scoundrel for opening the sewer gate for me."

"It's a queerly fortunate specimen of a scoundrel that has a government key to the sewers," said Javert. "Wouldn't I love to know where the hell he got it from…"

"How much did you give him?" wondered Vidocq.

"Not much," said Valjean. "A bit of change I had on me for the poor. Thirty or forty francs."

Vidocq looked at him with strange eyes.

"Thirty or forty francs!" he exclaimed. "'A bit of change'!" He turned to Javert: "How do you like that?"

"He's a regular Croesus, this fellow," said Javert. "I don't think he even comprehends what money is worth anymore. It came too easily to him. One patent for a new kind of bracelet clasp, and the faucet is open. Liards, sous,  _balles_ ,  _jaunets_  - it's all nothing but change. He must only recognize  _faffiots_ as money. Copper, silver, gold, - they can all go to the devil's grandmother; paper is where it's at for him."

"Well! I am definitely starting to see your point about him being a strange one." Vidocq leaned in Valjean's direction. "Forty francs may be 'a bit of change' to you, monsieur millionaire, but it's almost two weeks' salary to him."

"None of that, please," sighed Javert, moving his empty plate to the edge of the table and picking up the leather bag from the floor. "The last thing I need is for his charity glands to become moistened. I will not have him drooling over me as though I were one of his deserving poor. And do let's finish this. I would like to get home in time to get a couple of hours of sleep before the sun rises. Moineau, take the plates away, would you?"

When the table was clear, Javert upended the bag smartly over it, like a casino croupier spreading a fan of cards before the players. Gold coins stacked and tied off into fat rolls lined up on the table like soldiers on parade.

"Presto!" said Javert. "Even a millionaire like our Valjean can appreciate this sight. If this isn't the whole of Babet's gold haul from Widow Leon, it is still surely most of it."


	61. Chapter 61

Vidocq's eyes roved over the rolls. "Most, perhaps, but not all of it."

"Yes," said Javert. "There was twenty-five thousand in gold, and this is clearly less. Still, a very good start."

Moineau scratched behind his left ear with a long, dirty forefinger. "Where do you suppose the rest of it is?" he asked.

Javert threw a skeptical look around the tavern. "A few hundred probably went into securing this joint from its previous owner. I wouldn't have given ten francs for it, personally, but it has that marvelous cellar… Besides, no price truly bites when you've made away with three hundred grand all in all."

Moineau gave a low whistle. "Fifteen thousand napoleons," he said, awed. "Is that how much they took? _Pardieu_ …"

"Might there be more hiding spots in the cellar?" asked Valjean. "Under the floor stones, for instance?"

"Unlikely," said Javert. "The cellar is below the water-line of the river for most of the year, I imagine. Had we been locked in it closer to autumn, we would have likely been treading water."

"No, no, he might be onto something," said Vidocq thoughtfully, his fingertips worrying his chin. "What does gold care about water, after all? Or jewels?"

Javert shrugged. "Fine, take his side. We'll look the place over again in daylight - well, daylight or not, we'll need lamps aplenty. Still, if you ask me, the floor is not the place. After all, we're looking not just for twenty-five thousand in gold, but also what, a hundred and forty in banknotes? We better make a move on Babet's other haunts before he has them cleaned up."

 "Or we ask him to barter with us," suggested Vidocq.

"Why is your first thought always bargaining?" asked Javert peevishly. "We must exhaust all other avenues first. If we find the money ourselves, there will be nothing for him to barter with."

"All very true, but we still don't know where his other haunts are, do we? Unless Moineau has something new for us?"

" _Dame!_ Babet is not exactly one for holding soirees," said Moineau defensively. "All our meetings were in neutral places. I couldn't very well ask him, could I?"

"No one faults you," said Javert.

"Well, then it's as I said: we don't know," said Vidocq. "So why not let Babet trade his life for the rest of the loot? The widow's heirs will insist on maximum restoration of property. Can you blame them? I can't, myself. And honestly, what do you care if he goes to  _Abbaye de Monte-à-Regret*_  or is he rots away in Rochefort?"

"His kind does not rot," said Javert, rolling a fat stack of gold coins back and forth over the table with two fingers. "It toughens into leather and jerky. If he manages to quit Rochefort, we will never be able to take a bite out of him again."

"He will not quit Rochefort," promised Vidocq. "The air is exceedingly bad there. The miasmas will finish what the prosecutor started."

Javert raised his eyes to him and squinted with a ferocious air. "Absolutely not!"

"He raised a gun against you. You know it's only what he deserves."

"Not by your hand!" said Javert fiercely. "Nor by the hand of any of your accomplices! You are not a magistrate. You have no authority to send out such orders."

"What difference does it make whether I'm a magistrate? A minute ago you regretted that Babet will live in Rochefort. Now you do not want him to die there. Where is the logic? He must do one or the other."

Valjean decided it was a good time to step out. Talk of the _bagne_ and dying there was a little more than his nerves could bear after the day he had.

"Going to go breathe some fresh air," he said to no one in particular.

Moineau also rose quietly and headed out with him. The two inspectors by the door, as still as English guardsmen, let them out without a word.

"Why are they silent?" asked Valjean in a whisper as they walked towards the veranda.

"They are from Sacha's squad," said Moineau. "He hand-picks them from all recruits. It's a sort of informal school of policemen that he's organized."

"He teaches them not to speak?"

"Amongst other things. He puts a lot of stock in patience. Knowing how to remain still and silent and not be fatigued by it."

"How long will they stand there like that?"

"Until the Gendarmerie sends a pair of its own guards to relieve them. A few more hours."

They sat down at the table under the trellis, trying to ignore the angry conversation taking place indoors.

Valjean leaned back and tilted his face up towards the sky to watch the stars. 

Moineau pulled out a cigarette case of darkened silver, shook out a long thin Spanish cigarette, and stuck it between his teeth. Valjean leaned over and sheltered his flint and steel for him with his hand. When the cigarette was finally lit, Moineau inhaled voluptuously.

Valjean leaned back again, just in time to see one of the stars hanging over the hill - a red one, brighter than the rest - move slightly.

That's no star, he thought, lowering his arms. Someone is watching us from the top of the hill and also smoking.

Immediately, the light went out, as if the unseen entity heard his thoughts and hastened to cover the cigarette that gave away his location.

Too late, thought Valjean with a mixture of anger and glee. I know you're there.

"May I ask you something?" he said.

"Ask," answered Moineau laconically.

"What's the story with Javert and that fellow Lacour?"

"Coco? Where do you know him from?"

"I don't. I mean, I didn't. He ambushed us a few hours ago and took Javert aside for a conversation. Javert looked angry when he returned but did not say why."

 "Angry?" asked Moineau. "That's interesting… Was it fresh anger or seething?"

Valjean recalled Javert's clenched teeth and white-knuckled fists. "Fresh anger," he said.

"Perhaps it's to do with me. I've spotted Coco around in the last couple of days in places where he shouldn't have shown himself. It was a good thing no one else from the gang recognized him in that ridiculous wig. Or they would've finally juiced that coconut of his once and for all. Just how angry was Sacha?"

"Quite intensely angry. And also something else. Horrified, I would say. Also intensely."

"Ah. Then I think I know what transpired. Coco must have finally got that promise out of him."

"What promise?"

"That Sacha would escort him to a ball."

==================================================

*Abbey of mounting-[the steps]-with-regret – argot for the guillotine.


	62. Chapter 62

"Javert? A ball?"

"I know! can you imagine?"

Not at all, thought Valjean. But Moineau continued:

"It would crush him to do this."

"To go to a ball?"

"No, to take Coco with him if he does. He is loathe to take him into someone's house."

"Wait a minute. You are not talking about a public dance?"

"Of course not. Why would Coco bash his head against Sacha's resolve for so long to win his company for some public dance? A private ball, naturally."

"A society ball? How in the world would Javert gain an invitation to such a thing?"

Moineau snorted. "Invitations are a minor concern," he said. "Of the great families residing in Faubourg St. Germain," he continued, "I would venture to say at least a dozen owe Sacha for some service or other rendered to them over the years. Most know better than to invite him, but not all. I've seen him turn away messengers. He hates those the most, as he never has any spare coin for a tip."

Valjean briefly imagined a stuffy-faced liveried footman of some duchess ascending the stairs to Javert's apartment with a large gold-edged envelope in his hand and finding its unshaven and sulky occupant, all six feet of him, sitting by his dressing mirrors in leather boots and a short workman's vest and carefully applying paint to his eyelashes.

"Coco wants to be escorted by Javert to a private ball given by a titled family?" summed up Valjean incredulously. "On his arm? Like a woman?"

Moineau shrugged. "Like anyone else in their situation. If the setting permits it, then perhaps yes, like a woman. If the setting does not permit it, then like a friendly acquaintance. Or do you imagine _tantes_ do not attend balls? Or even organize them? That is not what's holding Sacha back. He just does not trust Coco to behave himself. Suppose he takes him into a house of some esteemed person, a house he gained entry into on basis of some invaluable past service rendered - and Coco gets caught with some silver spoons up his sleeve?"

"But why does Coco want this?"

"Why, who knows why?" Moineau took the cigarette butt out of his mouth and used it to light another one. "For money, for a mention by name in the society section, - for revenge, finally." He unwrapped the butt to check for tobacco residue, dropped the paper tidbit on the ground, and inhaled greedily again. He smoked, Valjean remarked, like a true habitué, almost shaking with need.

"Revenge? on Javert?"

"Sure! why not. On Sacha, for denying him friendship all these years. On his own changed political fortunes. On the Jesuits, for losing power; on Vidocq, finally. They did not bury the hatchet very deeply."

Moineau was muttering ever faster and less distinctly. Valjean got the sense that the evening had put far more of a strain on him than he was willing to let show to his superior and his brother.

"Why ill-use Javert if it's Vidocq he wants revenge on?"

"What is there left to take from Vidocq? He is going to be a private citizen soon. Whereas Sacha remains a government agent. A blow against his reputation would ruin him. Besides, what hurts one hurts the other. Vidocq is Sacha's master and protector, for better or worse. If you can't or won't be an officer, then you keep on marching under the sergeant-major… But perhaps it isn't revenge."

Moineau fell silent, then added: "Coco is …odd around Sacha."

"Odd in what respect?"

"More obsequious than usual. As if he expects Sacha to actually rise to some position of power. Which is an absurd bet to hedge. Sacha is far from young, and Prince Louis… well, the odds of a Bonapartist government being installed any time soon are long, to say the least… Unless there is something I really misunderstand about the current state of things. Perhaps Coco knows something I do not. Perhaps Queen Hortense and Prince Louis are planning to make a move, and soon, and Coco is counting on Prince Louis to remember Javert especially, for all that old business… It's not as though Coco has any real political inclinations - he inclines according to the changing winds. The Jesuits' pet one day, the Emperor's man the next. Still, a very long shot. No, no… he's been gravitating towards Sacha for years, I'm told. Before 1830, even. Not sure if a far-off prospect of the return of the Bonapartes explains that."

Valjean had an idea of what could explain such gravitation, but he decided to keep it to himself.

"If Javert already made the promise, can anything release him from it?" he asked.

Moineau shrugged again. "I don't see what could. It's not as though he has so many other pressing social obligations. No ill relatives that could take a turn for the worse, no jealous or prudent spouse to keep him at home. Even his work tends to end at some point in the day or night. Frankly, he's screwed. I wouldn't envy the Devil himself if he had to take Coco out dancing."

He rose and stomped out the cigarette end. "I need to get out of here soon. Need to go walk it all off. It's a pity Lecour does not keep night hours in his salle. I feel like getting into a scientific fight." He made a few lightning-fast air swipes over the table, ducking and weaving as he punched.

"What do you study?" asked Valjean as he rose from the bench as well.

" _Savate_ , of course!" exclaimed Moineau, dropping to the ground suddenly to execute a leg swipe. " _Chausson,_ too. Single-stick, English boxing… Sacha is all arm and leg, his reach is monstrous, and he kicks like a mustang. I've seen him break a tree with his roundhouse. Me, I'm smaller. Gotta think harder, move faster. You, I bet you could probably punch a man's skull right in."

 "Never tried it," said Valjean. "Hope I'll never have to."

"Where are you going?" panted Moineau.

"A stroll. Stretch my legs a bit."

"A stroll? What, in circles around the ditch?"

"No, on the grass above," said Valjean and headed to the stairs cut into the earth.

When he climbed up and out, he found exactly what he expected to find: Marie, sitting close by with his legs crossed like a tailor, peering forlornly into the ditch. The moonlight illuminated a scowl on his pock-marked face. It was plain that he had heard everything.


	63. Chapter 63

"I know why you're here," said Marie without looking at Valjean. "And I will not give in."

Valjean sat down next to him, put his elbows on his knees and leaned into the cool breeze, tilting his head up to the sky. It was a splendid summer night. He could not recall the last time he allowed himself to sit out on the grass and look at the stars.

"I will not give in!" repeated Marie with more emphasis. "Go on and scowl at me all you want. I don't fear you. I only fear him, Javert!"

In truth, Valjean was not at all scowling but simply trying to think of something diplomatic to say. But now he did scowl: Marie's declaration reminded him of Fantine, who had once thrown almost identical words in his face.

Perhaps she had been in love with Javert after all, thought Valjean, bewildered. Perhaps this is what being in love with him does to people.

"This is so unjust," said Marie quietly, still not looking at Valjean. "I was sure that this time, finally, maybe I could... But then you appeared! My God! where did you even come from? Out of nowhere... sprang up from the very ground!.. Seventeen years now I've been prostrating myself before him – like a slave! like a dog!.."

His face scrunched up, and he breathed out a single sob. At that moment, a slight change in the direction of the wind carried a cloud of potent fumes towards Valjean's face. Marie was extremely drunk.

"Seventeen years," repeated Marie, breathing the words out unevenly through clenched teeth. "With nothing to show for it. Failure after failure. It is all the fault of  _that Jew!_  He stole him from under my nose before I could so much as blink. Dragging him everywhere by the elbow, like he had any right… And then he had the gall to take Javert's mind with him to the grave!"

Marie turned his face towards Valjean.

"Do you know that I went to Charenton every day for three weeks? They would not let me see him. Not once. It was Vidocq who put him there, to sit in a padded room. Straitjacketed like a convict, a priest babbling at him day and night. As if Javert cared two figs about religion! One day, I come, and they tell me he's gone. 'What happened to him?' I ask. 'He got better and got discharged,' they say. I find the priest, pick him up by the collar. He spreads his arms, all innocent-like. 'The melancholy mania,' says he, 'dissipated into ordinary unhappiness.' I go to the Prefecture. They refuse to tell me anything. Bah! As though I were not a detective myself! I found out everything soon enough. Not just discharged - reassigned! To some provincial shit-hole up north! I go to Pas-de-Calais. I rattle all my teeth and bones in a post coach for five hours. I find the station house. He walks past me, enters it, doesn't give me the time of day. Not a word, not a sign. Like he doesn't recognize me.  _Pardieu!_ Just scowls into his collar. A new scowl, too. Meaner, deeper. Like a bulldog's."

Marie turned away again to look down at the tavern.

"I wish I knew what that man did to him. What sort of sorcery he used. Was it magnetism? mesmerism? some Jewy witchcraft? I'd understand if he were handsome. I'd understand if he were charming. But he was a horrible creature. He made my hair stand on end. If I believed in demons, he would be the first candidate I'd suspect. No literary fancy of de Sade's could measure up to what he did every day with a cheerful smile on his lips. And everyone worshiped him for it! Javert above all - he was blinded, spell-bound... Would not hear a word against him. As if I couldn't see the truth written plainly on his skin! Always sporting new bruises, new gashes, new stitches, new plasters. There was no end to them! The two of them, they would blame everything on his head wound, say that it was making him clumsy. Javert called him "Doctor Frankenstein" and joked that they will need an electrical machine soon, to reanimate him after he falls to bits. As though I couldn't guess at the truth - that the good doctor who was forever stitching up his wounds was also the one who kept opening them!"

Valjean said nothing.

"And now he's found you," continued Marie with renewed disgust in his voice. "Another brute to scare off anyone who dares come near him and thrash him when you two are alone. What perverse instinct drives him to this debasement?"

He spat into the grass.

"But who am I to talk, eh?" he said. "I'm a scoundrel too. He'd never have promised me anything of his own free will. He hates me."

Marie laughed humorlessly. "You know how I got him to do it? I will tell you. His brother passed a note to a boy. I followed the boy to his house and told Javert the address. I knew the boy was sent by Javert himself. I told him what he already knew, claimed that I took risks in obtaining the intelligence, and made him promise me a handsome reward for it. I have wanted to spend an evening in public with him for so long. He is honest; he agreed..."

At this, Marie suddenly burst into drunken tears. Valjean tried to recall whether or not he had a pocket handkerchief with him, then remembered that Javert had used it to make a gag for Guelemer.

They sat like this for some time, in silence punctuated with occasional sobs and hiccups from the despondent agent. Finally, Marie quieted, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and rose on unsteady legs.

Valjean rose as well. He had still not said a word.

"Forgive me all this, Monsieur," said Marie, grasping Valjean's hands with his own moist ones. "I babble, I blubber… It's hard to say farewell to a hope so long cherished. I only ask one thing of you: be good to him."

The hands around Valjean's tightened with unexpected force.

"And if I find out that you were not good to him," continued Marie, suddenly sounding alarmingly sober, "then, my good sir, they will find you on a city rubbish heap with all your guts outside your belly. That much I promise you. This time, I will not stand idly by."

He released Valjean's hands. "As for his promise, I release him from it." He waved at Valjean magnanimously and almost tipped over. "Tell him that. And tell him also that if he can find it in his heart to grant me an audience now and again, it would bring me tremendous joy. Which will be followed by utter misery, of course. But it would still be worth it."

As he watched Marie stumble away into the darkness between the trees, Valjean pondered the awesome and peculiar force of love. What power it had, even over wicked hearts! What odd things it made men feel! Didn't he go through the same see-saw of emotions the night he found Cosette's missive to Marius in her blotter? First, a bright flare of hatred towards the person who displaced you from your love's heart. Then, gradually and grudgingly, acceptance. And quick on its heels, a new desire to see them both well and happy.

Perhaps this is how a man knows his love is true, thought Valjean as he descended back into the ditch: when they leave you for another man, you find yourself wishing them both happiness, though it wrenches your heart from your chest. Had he not gotten Javert's summons in the mail, what would he have been doing for the past couple of days? The same thing he had been at the entire month: carrying baskets of lint made by Cosette to Marius' house, inquiring after him, praying for his recovery. Because Marius was Cosette's beloved now, and they were to live happily ever after, and this was somehow almost enough.

In the tavern, Vidocq, Javert and Moineau were inspecting the gold coins and tallying them up.

"Where the devil were you?" asked Javert without rancor, without looking up, and without releasing a chewed-up pencil stub from his mouth.

"Out sitting on the grass," said Valjean. Then he added: "Next to Coco."

Javert groaned and mimed stabbing himself in the eye with the pencil.

"Not particularly surprising," said Vidocq. "I lead a veritable army here. He'd have had no trouble following us."

"He instructed me to tell you something," said Valjean.

"What?" asked Javert.

"That he retracts his demand."

"He does?" said Javert with cautious hope.

"Yes. He told me to tell you that he deceived you, and thus you don't owe him anything. He said he was a scoundrel for extracting the promise, and he was taking it all back."

"He told you all this?"

"He did."

"In those words?"

"More abundant and colorful ones, but yes."

"Well, how about that," muttered Javert. Then he added with suspicion: "A fine long time it took you to hear him out, though. Did you convince him to do this?"

"I did no such thing."

"So what did you say to him?"

Valjean sat down across from Javert and picked up a roll of coins to inspect.

"As it happens, not one single word."


End file.
